Grosvenor Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition of recent works by one of Pakistan's leading young contemporary artists, Muzzumil Ruheel (b. 1985). The exhibition is in collaboration with Canvas Gallery, Karachi and will open with a private view onThursday, 4 October 2016 from 6-8pm. It will be open to the public from 5 - 14 October 2016.
Muzzumil Ruheel was born in 1985 in Lahore, Pakistan, and is currently living and working in Karachi, Pakistan. In 2005, Muzzumil received his bachelor's degree in Arts, with a specialization in Journalism and Political Science, from Govt. Degree College (Lahore, Pakistan). In 2009, he went on to receive his second bachelor's degree in Visual Arts, from Beacon House National University (Lahore, Pakistan).
He was trained in the traditional art of Urdu, Arabic and Persian calligraphy before enrolling into an art school. Text has been a very significant part of his work. It is the medium in which he visualizes. He says "For me, words are the bridges through which I communicate and transcribe the visuals of my mind, its like storytelling, where a storyteller tells a story and we create visuals in our minds. My practice too is the same".
Using text as a medium for his visual art practices, he writes and rewrites accounts and stories, which make him, contemplate and question documented history and time. Visually, from a distance the works look like a chaotic assemblage of greyness just like realities today - frenzied, intertwined and unclear. He is entangled in a constant investigation as he researches events over and over again as he tries to document time itself; it is very similar to the age old process of doing 'mashq' done to achieve perfection. Ruheel's work is not based on a single notion, but is rather drawn from an open process of observing and gathering visual and conceptual materials, which entails their reflection through historical, social and political and religious views as well as his personal milieu.
A piece of fiction, which is there, and yet holds no existence; based on truths, yet alive in stories, it lives and deviates its realities from one's words to another's perceptions. It is these perceptions that a raconteur plays with, revealing accounts that create visuals in our minds. How the audience perceives the characters is at the narrator's leverage. How much fiction is part of a story and how much of it is the truth depends on what he chooses to exaggerate, what he delicately omits and what point of view is presented. "Far from the constraints of time, in a world where I can be anywhere; I exist, sometimes sitting next to a person, whereas sometimes in the shape of a clock, sometimes in the form of a chair, sometimes a pen, sometimes the wind that wisps past people eavesdropping, and in whatever form, living that moment overhearing conversations, witnessing situations and conversing aggravations." - Muzzumil Ruheel
Ruheel's current body of works are extracts of his interactions. Small accounts of situations he has witnessed through living multitudes of lives of people, animals and inanimate objects. He is divulging the overheard conversations, variations in perceptions of personalities, bigoted confessions of demagoguery and pretentious prejudiced stories of bravery. The existence of these contradictory contrasts has no significance to their realities but perceptions are never black or white, they exist in a murky grey. Irrespective, these details as usually forgotten as most are lost and tangled living their lives, running towards destinations, lost in their own definitions, perceptions of what they believe to be right.
Ruheel has exhibited works in an array of mediums, including multi-disciplinary mixed-media,interactive installation, video-art, performance, painting, digital, graffiti/street-art and sculpture. Muzzumil has already accumulated a number of awards and is in numerous national and international private collections.
He has been constantly involved with solo and group shows nationally and internationally. "The alternate life of lies" (solo), Canvas Gallery, Karachi 2016, "And his beard grew and grew and grew." (solo) Rohtas Gallery, Lahore 2015, Letter of apology, (Project), Kaladham Museum, Vijyanagar , India , "...but some of them never happened? (solo) "Canvas Gallery, Karachi 2014. His artwork has been featured in several publications, such as The wall art magazine, The National, The News, Shifter, Nukta Art Magazine, and many more. Muzzumil Ruheel lives and works in Karachi.
For an entire list of exhibition please see: http://www.canvasartgallery.net/artists_pages/muzzumil_ruheel/cv.pdf