Affan Baghpati’s sculptural explorations have evolved into a spectacle of multiplicities revealing an interplay of associations and the artist’s craftsmanship in forging relationships welded together through a series of found objects. He carefully manipulates these materials emphasizing the nature of narrative building through personal experiences, social commentary and psychological motifs that have been created over the years. These visual elements have been repeated and recreated through colorful sculptural inventiveness and curated with a theatrical vernacular that invites viewers into Baghpatis’s immersive art practice. His recent solo presentation titled ‘non(object)’ was displayed at Koel Gallery, Karachi where we saw the artist expand on his treasury of sculptural investigations creating pieces that use print and drawing techniques.

Baghpati continuously experiments with image-making techniques, sometimes appearing in the form of delicate carving, welding, and assembling of metals which can be associated with traditional carving to create printing plates. The spirit of deconstructing and reimagining materials are central themes in the artist’s process as he chooses to highlight the abstraction of form and line while retaining the classical associations of antiquity. The images and forms can be linked back to Baghpati’s growing repertoire of visuals, as seen in the Pehelwan steel stencil that he has hand sawed and paired with his iconic brass topper that is then used as a drawing and printing tool in ‘Pehelwan emboss’ where the artist manual pressed it to create a perfect indentation on paper.

Being playful when exploring the intersectionality of materials allows the artist to create infinite possibilities of spontaneity that signal a new direction in his practice, where he is assembling a series of hand-sawed forms to create a tableau. The act of sawing into found brass plates, as seen in ‘Lady not yearning for her lover’, creates the first set of drawings where the void left behind on the brass plate is activated as its own unique form. A reclining figure was removed from one of the brass plates, a grand bed with pillows from the second plate, the third plate features a long pipe attached to a traditional hookah and two birds flying in the sky and lastly, the fourth plate depicts a standing figure gently bowing holding their hand close to their face. The positioning of these figures is precise in order to create a conversation between the removed form and the intricate detailing left behind on the plate.

The second act of this process of image-making is that the artist then reassembles these cut-outs to create a tableau. The naturalistic textures of shine and iridescence create a symphony of details that are painterly and rich in color. The forms are then further detailed with copper, silver solder, aqeeq stone and glass elements to finish their characterization in the staging. What we see as an end result is a new conversation that has begun between the reclining figure on the bed, smoking a hookah and the standing figure presenting an object in subservience. Baghpati creates a cinematic sequence that retains the old-world charm of traditional tapestry and miniature painting motifs while subverting the predictability of classical narrative with relational dynamics that are referencing the present.

At first glance, ‘self-melt’ seems to be a two-dimensional work of art but on closer examination, we begin to trace the artist’s experimentations into chine-collé printing techniques that resonate with the hybridity of craftsmanship seen in his other sculpture pieces. The chine-collé printing process painstakingly transfers the image from a copper plate onto a thin layer of tissue that is then pressed onto another sheet of paper. The desire to steer an image in a multiplicity of directions is parallel to Baghpati’s ability to use collage as a baseline to create compositions and sculptural works. In his practice, he will transcend the obvious representational forms creating an iconography of materials that actively shifts the perspective of the viewer.

The overly ornate ‘Bakri Wala’ comes from reimagining a commonly seen interaction between man and his animal, to a grand comical moment styled in carnival amusement. An unusual wall-hanging piece, titled kettle, pairs animal horns with a steel teapot as a witty replacement for a traditional antler mount. The clever wordplay in ‘Baja-dani’ uses the Baghpati-esque hand-carved burma teak phool-jaal object as the top half joined to a saxophone creating the surmadani bottle that we see time and again in the artist’s various bodies of works. These distinct assemblages have become synonymous when describing Baghpati’s visual vocabulary. The nature of these sculptural collages is transient as compared to the highly polished and elegant objects such as ‘silver surmadani’ which has finesse and is finished to perfection. Searching for balance in all his works of art, the artist is able to create functional designs in the form of jewellery pieces that merges his modern and traditional motifs.