Syed Uzair Shah doesn’t partake in the archetypal concept of chaos
A doctor, practising visual artist, and photographer who is unbound by worldly perspectives, Uzair’s works are a free understanding of the spaces and movements that partake in the archetypal concept of beauty born from chaos.
Finding a balance in dynamism and exploring textures in lines and shapes, Uzair’s practice breaks away from the conventions of traditional artistic expressions. His camera is his paintbrush and the images are not static. Avoiding the common ‘frozen’ nature of photography, he utilizes digital tools to preserve the moments rather than capturing them, hence the images are in constant motion – nostalgic, energetic, and act as reminders of impermanence.
The compositions are unapologetic; they offer a window into grand landscapes that are futuristic and surreal, and often account for utopian possibilities, absolving the reality of injustice, classicism, and hierarchies. The visuals are strokes of imagination struck by unpredictable colours and perspectives running rampant, concluding into a bigger picture that narrates the forms of Sufism and the histories of architecture. Harnessing the potential energy in buildings, crowds, and perspectives, Uzair’s photographs subvert our gaze from our own mortality, creating spaces of pleasure and desires where we can live forever. The visuals explore a world that is blended, whole, and constituent of fractured constellations of past, present, and future in the same dimension.
Uzair absorbs from unsettling realities and produces images that are detached from the bothers of life – these are floating worlds where the artist and his viewers can live many moments at once.
Image: A swirl of the Dervish, Uzair Shah, photograph, all copyrights retained by the artist 2021.
