Farhad Hussain

Farhad Hussain - Recent Paintings (organized by Chatterjee & Lall), Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, Mumbai, November 25 - December 2, 2006

Good overall condition. Colors slightly brighter in original than catalogue illustration.
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'My main weapon is humor. It overthrows the romantic mode of consumption that [we] would otherwise be happy with.  Are we to laugh at my images? Or should we just enjoy them voyeuristically? I'd like to question the stereotypes we live with.' (Farhad Hussain, Farhad Husain -Recent paintings, Mumbai 2006).

'At first glance Farhad Hussain's current collection of canvases seem made easy for visual consumption; they are big, brightly-colored and full of merry members of happy families. So what's Hussain giving us, you think, that others with their flatly depicted scenes of domestic bliss aren't?...And then you notice that the Hussain's painted smiles and somersaulting children are more freaky than friendly and that the cheerful, grinning members of would-be families look more like they belong in a circus troupe than in a living room...In the theatrical entwining of the sinister and the safe, the suggestion of a crossing of fantasy and reality that frolics throughout Hussain's canvases, we see elements of K. G. Subramanyan.  Wild and tame, what is interior and what exterior become as deliberately blurred as in many of Subramanyan's reverse-side paintings on glass of household scenes...' (Zehra Jumabhoy, Farhad Husain -Recent paintings, Mumbai 2006).

Farhad thus bases his works on the realities of human relationships and their subtle complexities. As he states, "In my earlier works, I used to work on images that came from my day to day visual experience. But these images were always present with a touch of humor and sarcasm." Farhad's paintings dwell on the human figure. His works are narrative with each figure interrelated to the other but his figures 'mess around with the boundary lines between male and female, fact and fiction, the alluring and the repellent...Because Hussain's canvases take the enactments of middle-class home and hearth cosiness for granted; while simultaneously sprinkling them with a touch of the unpredictable; they make us doubt that conventional codes of conduct are such straightforward blessings in the first place. ' (Zehra Jumabhoy, Farhad Husain -Recent paintings, Mumbai 2006).