Waqas Khan makes large, minimalist ink drawings while in a tranced state or inspired by Sufi religious art and music. Physical viewer proximity to the paper is essential for grasping the properties of the intricate, densely positioned lines of dots and dashes that make up these transcendent, celestial waves or webs.
Read MoreKhan's meditative drawings are inspired by the ethos of Mughal miniature painting, Sufi religious music and scripture, and the cumulative technical processes of printmaking, the discipline he specialised in for his BFA (2008) at National College of Arts, Lahore.
Despite the works' pristine nature and geometric mandala-like forms, their printmaking sensibility introduces an organic feel—a distant hint of Petri dishes in a laboratory or the cross-sectioned cellular structures of plants.
Waqas Khan's obsessively detailed drawings are made on thick wasli paper, repeating cellular patterns and motifs that lock together to form a shimmering geometric whole, such as an incomplete circle or strata-like rippling waves.
Khan's minute dots and dashes are rendered with a Rotring rapidograph, a drafting pen with an ink cartridge and fine tubular nib that enables greater density and complexity when used by artists, architects, and engineers. He has also constructed a special table for making these religious works that are motivated by love. The inks tend to be pink, black, white, or turquoise, and sometimes magnifying glasses are supplied in exhibitions so viewers can closely examine the marks.
Waqas Khan's artworks include The breath of the compassionate (2012), Around the edges, as i see it (2015), The text in continuum (2015), My Small Dancing Particles (2017), Name Me White (2017), In the Name of God II (2017), You, Me, Everyone (2019), The Gibbous Moon (2019), Memory (2019), and Transpired (2021).
Occasionally Khan works on canvas and combines his use of ink with acrylic paint.
Waqas Khan has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions. His work has also featured in numerous art fairs, including Art Basel, Art Dubai, Artissima, Frieze London, India Art Summit, and Art Stage Singapore.
Solo exhibitions include (D)escribir el mundo, MUSAC, Leon, Spain (2019); History, Memory or Geometry, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2018); Waqas Khan, Manchester Art Gallery (2017); Acoustics of Life, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (2015); The Untitled Show, Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid (2014).
Group exhibitions include Toronto Biennial of Art, Canada (2022); Long Story Short, Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid (2021); Ver Versus Ver I—II, Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid (2020); Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2020); The 4th Today's Documents: A Stitch in Time, Beijing Today Art Museum, Beijing (2019); The World On Paper, Deutsche Bank Collection, Berlin (2018); Asia Pacific Triennale 9, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane (2018); Lahore Biennale, Pakistan (2018).
Khan's work is held in several institutional collections around the world, including the British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; and Devi Foundation, New Delhi.
Waqas Khan's Instagram can be found here.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2022
