Text: Aasim Akhtar
Photography: Abid Hassa
The refined works of Abid Hassan result from his experiments of the
past decade with manipulating and contorting acrylic paint into
strange, otherworldly shapes. For these abstracted landscapes, he
poured and dripped paint onto canvases, variously twisting and turning
them to achieve feathery drips, splotches and oozing pools of colour.
With synthetic hues like raspberry, pistachio and burnt orange, the
works resemble toxic beachfronts or extra planetary atmospheric
effects.
Hassan’s focus on the drip and spill takes the techniques
of painters like Paul Jenkins into fantastical figurative terrain. By
physically manipulating his canvases, he utilises the gravitational
flow of paint to evoke natural phenomena such as the curly fronds of
ferns and beach scrub and the spray of a crashing ocean wave. Like Roy
Lichtenstein’s and David Reed’s explorations of the isolated brushstroke
as a painterly trope, Hassan’s experiments with the drip celebrate the
technique’s organic life, primal appeal and formal exuberance. In some
paintings, Hassan uses his carefully controlled technique to depict
violent action, evoking both natural cycles of life and the unnatural
decay brought on by industrial waste. While his keyed-up backgrounds
have a slightly sinister air, the oily red-violet liquid explosions and
toxic-looking spills have an otherworldly beauty.
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