There are worlds the eye cannot enter, yet art does. In Original, Danish Ahmed ventures into that unseen terrain, translating metaphysical tension into geometry, texture, and silence.

Presented as his recent solo exhibition at The Canvas Gallery, Original unfolds as an intricate meditation on the relationship between metaphysical philosophy and artistic form. Drawing from Plato’s Theory of Forms and Sufi metaphysics, Ahmed constructs a visual language that gestures toward a higher order of reality, one that exists beyond perception but shapes all that can be perceived.¹ His compositions seek a sense of harmony and alignment that mirrors this transcendent logic, positioning his practice as an exploration of the threshold between the material and the immaterial.

Across the exhibition, recurring visual strategies signal this pursuit of the ineffable. In works such as Untitled IV and Untitled XIII, pristine geometric configurations, planes, prisms, and sharply angled silhouettes serve more than mere compositional devices. They echo the Platonic notion that all imperfect, earthly things are only shadows of pure, immutable forms. In The Republic, Plato describes the visible world as a reflection of a higher, unchanging reality. ² Moving from philosophy to visual language, geometry becomes a bridge between the material and the transcendent. It has long served as a language through which artists have sought to engage the divine. In Islamic art, for instance, it became a means of sensing the sacred through order and proportion rather than through figuration. Geometry, in this context, allows the divine to be perceived through structure itself. ³ Ahmed’s work echoes this quiet conviction, using geometry as a means to align form with the unseen order underlying all existence.

Yet this order is never absolute. Precision, though central to Ahmed’s practice, is carefully unsettled. He allows deliberate interruptions, such as an edge that dissolves into texture in Untitled XII or a hue that deepens into opacity in Untitled III. These soft ruptures evoke the Sufi idea that material reality is but a partial expression of divine perfection.

Ahmed’s exploration of color extends this spiritual inquiry at the heart of Original. Working with what he calls the most basic and fundamental forms and colors, he approaches painting as a way of tracing the visible back to its unseen origin. His palette is both restrained and deliberate, with muted earths, void-like blacks, and sudden flashes of crimson, ochre, or blue that pulse between matter and spirit. Using a combination of solid oil paint and charcoal, Ahmed creates subtle shifts in texture and depth. The charcoal introduces a softness that tempers the precision of the painted form, while the oils ground it in permanence.

In Sufi cosmology, such interplay evokes the ‘alam al-mithal’, the imaginal realm, where sensory form meets pure essence.⁴ Ahmed’s colors seem to inhabit this threshold. Luminous whites radiate from within, while darker tones drink in light until it disappears. Between these two poles, something alive begins to move. Through this chromatic dialogue, Ahmed allows paint itself to become a mode of remembrance and a way of sensing the divine pulse that animates all creation.

Equally central to his practice is the relationship between form and void. Ahmed reflects on the belief that if “everything that is created is created by God,” then what lies beyond creation, emptiness itself, can be God.⁵ This idea reshapes how one encounters his compositions. We are conditioned to see a void as absence, the whiteness as negative space to be overlooked. But what if this emptiness held more within it? What if it were not the absence of being but the presence of another order? In Untitled I, these questions take on a quiet intensity. Two opposing forms, a red skeletal frame and a solid, blackened shape, are suspended in a sea of white, and between them, a delicate exchange of colored clouds unfolds. Made with oil and charcoal, the clouds seem to move between states, between structure and dissolution, almost as if they’re slipping between worlds. The red frame is open, suggesting invitation or emergence, while the dark form feels closed off, absorbing rather than offering. Still, neither exists without the white that surrounds and holds them. What we might rush to overlook becomes the very thing that holds everything together.

This search for meaning within emptiness finds another voice in the clouds, where geometry loosens its grip and begins to breathe. In Untitled VI, cloud-like formations drift through these frameworks, dissolving boundaries and softening the precision of form. In these passages, Ahmed transforms the cloud into a metaphor for spiritual movement, a visual expression of the unseen currents between form and formlessness. Art-historically, such imagery carries its own lineage. Artists at the turn of the twentieth century often used clouds as symbols of transformation, liminality, and the invisible forces that shape the visible world. ⁶  Ahmed’s clouds perform a similar function. They suggest that creation itself is in constant flux.

There is a playfulness in the way Ahmed’s planes interact, guiding the eye from one form to another before pausing it within a quiet expanse. This is most evident in Untitled VII. Yet beneath this motion lies a profound stillness. The calm, cloud-like charcoal passages that drift through rigid geometries recall the night sky, a place where stillness and infinity coexist. How often do we see clouds resting in darkness? Here, they do, hovering softly. Their improbable calm unsettles the precision that first appears to anchor the work. The vast negative spaces between planes deepen this sense of unease, as if fragments of a once-whole form hover in suspension, held together by an unseen order that keeps them apart.

Out of this tension emerges a way of seeing. Ahmed’s deliberate use of perspective lines, at times guiding and at times halting the gaze with bold washes of color, turns viewing into a meditative act, as seen in Untitled X. The eye is invited to move and then to wait, to notice where form opens into silence. In this, his geometry becomes both boundary and passage. It aligns him with artists such as Monir Farmanfarmaian, whose mirrored tessellations sought infinity through repetition, and Sulaiman Esa, who used geometry to express spiritual unity. ^{7 8} Yet Ahmed’s approach feels more inward, less about spectacle and more about attunement, tracing how divine order quietly reappears through the act of making.

This engagement with perspective and geometry naturally extends into a broader concern with alignment, of forms, of energies, of perception itself. Compositions such as Untitled VI are organized along central axes or balanced through subtle mirroring, as though the very act of making the work was one of atonement. Yet Ahmed resists total symmetry; there is always a slight dissonance, a tilt, and a drift.

Once one has experienced the works in this exhibition and returns to its title, even the word Original begins to shift in meaning. It no longer feels fixed, but layered, suggesting both a beginning and a truth. The title itself becomes part of the exhibition’s meditation, evoking the sense of origin as both the source and the essence of all that follows. Each line, void, and colour seem to reach beyond itself, tracing the path back to what first was. It reaches toward the source from which all things emerge, and to which they must eventually return.

‘Original’ was exhibited at The Canvas Gallery, Karachi, from June 12th to June 21st 2025.

Title Image: Untitled II, charcoal and pastel on paper, 21in x 13.4in, 2023

All images are courtesy of Syed Danish Ahmed.