In a recent show at the Full Circle Gallery, artist Babar Moghal presented a series of enigmatic paintings infusing imagery from our lived surroundings with surrealism, in a way that created a sense of otherworldliness.

“I don’t attach meanings to forms and colours, I find it inhibiting, it hinders the progress of new visual ideas,” he wrote in his statement. “My work may appear well-planned but it’s completely the opposite. I never plan beyond a central object, a thumbnail sketch of a figure, a building or a vehicle, then I create a world around that object.”

Surely enough, the artist draws from diverse references in this prolific show, from landscapes and architecture to animals, objects, human figures and fantastical conceptual scenes.

Each subject that the artist picks is put through a stylisation that gives the work a sombre, dystopian aura. Each object is imbued with a sense of decay and withering hollowness, stripped of its life and, instead, replaced with an almost skeletal form, weighed down with dust and cobwebs.

This creates a sense of intrigue, especially when the objects are so familiar and, in some cases, specific to our context. We are not used to seeing trucks in such a state, relating them more to the maddening chaos of the metropolis. Here, they are rendered with a quietness that is unsettling but, at the same time, there is a sublime beauty. The truck becomes a sort of ghost, yet it also exudes a foreignness, as if it were a hybrid from another dimension.

Babar Moghal’s enigmatic paintings are imbued with a sense of decay and withering hollowness, but also magical foreboding

The space around these objects adds to this sense, with its use of light and colour, creating a sense of isolation and emptiness which heightens these feelings of foreboding, yet also pushes it into the realm of the magical. This idea is seen throughout works such as Desolate Discotheque, Sitar, Clock, Setting Sun, Windmill and Stars and Stone.

In other works, it seems as though an entire story has been fabricated around a singular image, the paintings then carrying entire worlds within them. In Second Invisible Landscape, a tree-like form holds a lush green landscape of trees within it. This is mirrored upside-down below, yet in a dystopian reflection with shades of ashy blue, stylised into a kind of dying kingdom. This validates the notion of an alternate dimension, co-existing and mirroring this world.

Many of the works also seem to carry heavy symbolism and relay tales of darkness. Survive the Nights shows a portrait of what seems like a woman in a nun’s attire, yet stylised in a way that gives a sense of claustrophobia and constriction. The eyes are missing from the face, the mouth pursed shut as it sits beside a metronome, counting the seconds as the moon runs its cycles.

The scene creates a sense of entrapment, even though there are no objects to suggest it. A few of the other works feature objects used to measure time as well, such as Sundial, Clock and Metronome and, in the latter two, the objects seem to carry the night sky within them while the scene outside shows a hazy sun in the sky. The passage of time and the changes it brings becomes a recurring theme in the artist’s works.

Some of the works feature a lone cloaked figure roaming around these desolate landscapes. In Windfall, it approaches a familiar structure, much like the minarets seen in old Islamic architecture, which is breaking apart, in the process of being swept away by the wind. It calls to a loss of culture, values, religion and civilisation, and we are left to question whether this figure is a victim, a saviour, or merely a witness.

As we move through the show, we begin to recognise this dystopia as our own world going to ruin. But the real question is whether this is an omen for the future, or whether we are already living within it without even knowing of its existence just beneath the surface.

More importantly, are we going to be the casualties, survivors, saviours or apathetic witnesses?

‘Windfall’ was on display at Full Circle Gallery from March 11-25, 2022

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 27th, 2022