SUBLIME MALADIES
Muhammad Zeeshan
Anant Art Gallery, 2006
Catalogue Essay: Meera Menezes
Violence lurks in the unlikeliest of places in Moharnamad Zeeshan's works. It clothes itself in voluminous sheets, playing peek-a-boo with the viewer, teasing and tantalizing, simmering below the surface in an elaborate game of deception. Helping him along in this subterfuge is the delicious ambiguity of his motifs. Are they benign or malevolent, pure or impure, innocent or devious, erotic or crass? It is these shifting sands of interpretations that impart an edge to his body of gouaches on wasli, destabilizing expectations. He layers meanings as he would coats of watercolours contributing to the complexity of his content and surfaces.
(excerpt from the catalogue essay ‘Violence in Velvet’ by Meera Menezes)