Reviews

The human form in Moeen Faruqi's art on show at the Croweaters Gallery in Lahore is a symbolic cartography that converts the object into idea.

- Artist's Profile by Aasim Akhtar
THE NEWS, February 02, 2003.
FULL REVIEW

Moeen Faruqi discusses art, poetry, the many fears and insecurities, and a confused urban milieu out of which his art springs forth. His radiant, if disturbing, figurative forms and spacy landscapes in subdued hues reflect the urban paradoxes and chaos of a city like Karachi.

- Artist's Profile by Amra Ali
DAWN GALLERY, October 2002.
FULL REVIEW

The window to Moeen Faruqi's newest painting is wide open. In fact, through them he exposes quite a bit of his emotional uneasiness - some thing for the viewer to share, explore and criticize. The references to death and fear of his early paintings still linger on, but the moroseness of the morbid blacks and blues is changing. They are gradually evolving in to some sort of a celebration. Could it be possible that there is a new playfulness in the artist's painted imagery ?

- Amra Ali
The NEWS, April 1999.

Moeen's work stresses that his rationale for painting has always been pictorial. The evocation of sadness or wistful detachment marks itself to be patent in the new work as ever before. But the work is built up of contradictory associations; there are pervasive and appealing nuances of the human condition set to tones of psychedelic acrylics and oils. It's probably not enough for the figures to be themselves. And the figuration is heavier than that of the eighties. The bodies and faces have aged a little; the mood in one of irrevocable sadness; the heads turned away from the aridity that life holds.

- Asim Akhtar
ENCORE, March 1999.

The painter dismantles the image into abstract shapes with strong echoes of cubism. The narrative scene emerges in the figurative work and becomes intense with a tangible sexual tension of a desire wanting reciprocation

- Niilofur Farrukh
The Art Line, May 1998.

Moeen's views on love help to explain the tension between his men and women which is expressed through their stiff posture: "In a strange way love also becomes an end - something anticipated, a spark, a tense togetherness that dies the moment it is born between people." The concept of love dying the moment it is born is an intensely depressing one, and Moeen's bleak view is faithfully represented in his compositions. Although mostly rendered in strong primary colours in acrylic and oil, the end result is full of unstated pain and a curious somber passion.

- Irfan Hussain
The Herald, November 1995.