Ali Kazim, b.1979

Ali Kazim was born in Pattoki, Pakistan in 1979. He trained in Lahore and London, and has had exhibitions from Oxford to Karachi. His watercolours are tightly observed, highly detailed paintings which feel like a refrain from the Mughal past. They are miniatures at scale, sometimes of barren landscapes, and often of figures in isolation.

In the portraits there is interruption, as if you are seeing without permission or guidance. Again this echoes the inflection of miniatures, where precision seems to hide the role of the artist. Kazim manages to erase the chain of painter-subject-viewer, and suddenly it is just you, and the subject, and empty time. There is no apparent explanation for the person in front of you, and the result is a disarming suddenness, like seeing something you shouldn’t. It makes his figures very hard to leave.

About his practice, Kazim describes how he feels ‘some unseen pressure’ if the subject sits in the studio while he is working. He prefers working alone from photographs. It’s no surprise that such privacy slides through his work. 

‘I like leaving the space for the viewer to look at, but the portrait not looking back.‘

To me, they’re electric.