Guided by a hand lost in the fog of consciousness, Monir’s simple brushstrokes capture the ethereal. His work is an abstraction of time itself.
Living in Spain, the master Bangladeshi artist is caught between two worlds, two times, and two conceptions of reality. In this way, he straddles modernity and its elemental quest to know one’s own soul.
Through their delicate lines – balanced by a masterful use of space and an enigmatic understanding of composition – his paintings become symbols of ideas, standing outside the constraints of reality.
“You can paint a flower,” he says, “but how do you paint the smell of a flower?”
It is a question that is at the heart of Monir’s quest to navigate the rocky shores of modernity. Confronting each of us with a mirror to our selves, it asks us to look beyond the visible and to ponder over our true essence. It is a question that intimates at the essence of our very souls.
A 2014 painting called “Dancing Lines” is exemplary. Beneath black strokes ending in shadow is a short, dynamic bolt of turquoise. It is a subtle recollection of clouds over Meghna, the majestic dancing river.
With only a few short strokes, the master artist delves deeply into himself to capture the essence of the natural world – a reflection of his own soul.
He is a paragon of minimalism, working with a majestic subtlety of colour, applied in thin layers, with the barest hint of the paint’s texture.
His 2012 painting, “In the Shadow,” toys with the idea of timelessness. Mishmashing past and future, the mixed media piece uses the outlines of compasses to symbolise time and its unwavering tide.
Slavishness to time is a hallmark of our modernity. But, it’s a prison of our own making. For the master artist, that prison of the mind is a barrier to be shattered, as he longs for the freedom to roam the corridors of creativity, unfettered by man-made convention.
Monir takes that struggle for the mind’s freedom into his own hands. Straddling tradition and experimentation, he makes his own paper, asking it to reveal its mystery.
By working with the pulp of paper, he begins his quest right at the beginning, before even the idea of art – at the very point of creation.