Shahzad Hassan Ghazi: Grace Versus Strength

Shahzad experiments with classic Islamic art and modern art while focusing on the usage of ornaments, which he describes as “the elaboration of functionally complete objects for the sake of visual pleasure.” The usage of ornaments in art, although an age-old practice, for most of the twentieth century has been systematically excluded from mainstream Western art-practice as well as Asian art.

Since the beginning of the Romantic Movement, we have tended to equate creativity with spontaneity, but in traditional ornament, visual effects rarely happen by accident. Ornament is labor-intensive by its glamour of shapes, forms and colours. Fortunately, ornament usage is becoming acceptable again. Ornaments are intended, first and last, to give pleasure. It transforms the in-essential into a theatre for passion, beauty, and invention. Unlike traditional painting and sculpture, whose subject matter provides the key to their emotional tone, ornament communicates primarily through form. The only way to appreciate ornament is by contemplating it, and gaining a new understanding of the relation between functional and decorative form. This is exactly what we can find in Shahzad's works.

Shahzad's minimalist abstract paintings are made from constructing lines that measure less than a centimeter each. Trained in painting but interested in Persian and Mughal miniature paintings, Shahzad transforms the materials and processes employed in the traditional practice, abstracting his subconscious imagination and expanding his vision.

Interested in themes of meditation and transcendence inspired by Sufi mysticism and universal subjects, Shahzad creates primarily compositions that resemble complex referencing infinity, entering into a trance-like state in which he measures his breath to match his exhaustive mark-making.