Calligraphy is intrinsically linked to the meditative and highly personal process by which the art form is created. There is a certain transcendent universality to the artistic process: the rhythm, the precision, the attention to detail – and yet its manifestations are as divergent as the linguistic variation of their textual content. Nonetheless, the application of highly personal, stylistic flourish within a regular, geometric order has a pervasively harmonious aesthetic effect, regardless of whether the actual content is comprehensible for the viewer. Due to the meditative nature of the process and the textual basis of the art form, calligraphy retains a significant association with the scriptural, the spiritual and the metaphysical, an association in many ways shared by the number seven. It continuously recurs throughout manifestations of human culture, so much so, that it carries a pervasive sense of intangible, yet distinctly metaphysical importance. It is this mutually beneficial relationship between the combined associative potential of calligraphy and the number seven, as well as Amin Gulgee’s personal, meditative sculptural practice that drives the latest iteration of ‘7’, at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, which opened on the 30th of May.
Photo Credits - Fabrizio Piergiovanni
The basis for Gulgee’s sculptural installation is a line from the fifth verse of the Surah al-Alaq, in which it is written that God: “taught man that which he knew not” (Quran, 96:5). Whilst this Quranic verse been a recurring motif throughout Gulgee’s trajectory, it has become incrementally less recognisable and legible. In ‘7’, the original Arabic script has been divided into seven component parts, completely deconstructed, and then subsequently reconstructed through Gulgee’s metalworking process into the forms of ascending, monolithic structures; detailed, semi-permeable screens; and individual characters nestled in a gravel-carpet. The pieces are in a constantly fluctuating visual interrelationship with each other, allowed by the mastery of a tactile medium, which manipulates its material to play with form, light and texture. The sculptures are even accompanied by an algorithmic video piece, which randomly generates the same seven characters that comprise the sculptures, to which notes on the rubab (a lute-like instrument that originates in Central Afghanistan) are assigned, and then sound when the letter appears on the screen. Gulgee withholds his highly personal process from us, and we are forced to transcend the content. Thus, it is then that the pure aesthetics of calligraphic and sculptural form, and their interaction with a space, are appreciated in a pure sense. Gulgee, therefore, achieves a universality that cannot be achieved in legible calligraphy; a universal incomprehensibility that is perfectly summated by: “that which he knew not”.
There is a surreally symbiotic relationship between the site-specific installation of ‘7’ and the space it is situated in, the courtyard of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale. This third iteration of ‘7’, following those at the Wei-Ling Gallery (Kuala Lumpur) and Gulgee’s own gallery in Karachi, is ensconced in the heart of the city of seven kings and seven hills. Less than a five-minute walk from the teeming Spanish Steps, the experience of entering a courtyard that has been transformed into a sculptural ‘charbagh’ is ethereal, only emphasised by the accompanying irregular echoes of the algorithmic rubab below. Gulgee has previously played with the concept of the ‘charbagh’ (a garden given a quadrilateral structure to represent the four gardens of Paradise described in the Quran), and this is visible in the sculptural garden created in the installation of ‘7’. The gravel-carpets that surround each piece provide both continuity and division to the works, and the symmetrical placement interacts with the four small orange trees which were part of the courtyard’s pre-existing architecture.
Furthermore, the installation engages with its spatial context: the populous streets outside the museum only emphasise the tranquil, meditative peace of the courtyard; and the low back-wall of the space means that Zero Gravity (the largest in scale) reaches up and melds with the surrounding cacophony of terraces and windows of the apartments that are now part of the audience of the installation. The space is punctuated in a temporal manner by the play of light and shadow cast by the sun: Ascension pieces projecting contorted shadows; Perforated Scrolls and Salt Screens osmotically casting intricate shapes throughout the installation; Hands haunting the entrance with their shade-like presence. To use Gulgee’s words from the opening, “My work is my life. This is the place of my dreams. This is my reality…”, and when one enters the courtyard of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome, until the 23rd of September, they will be entering Gulgee’s reality, to which the artist’s own, highly personal process is the key.
Less than a five-minute walk from the teeming Spanish Steps, the experience of entering a courtyard that has been transformed into a sculptural 'charbagh' is ethereal, only emphasised by the accompanying irregular echoes of the algorithmic rubab below
‘7’ has been shown across the world, from Kuala Lumpur to Rome, via the city in which it was created, Karachi, and each iteration has taken a completely different form, undergone a metamorphosis. It has reacted to its context in an organic, site-specific way, and has transformed accordingly. Gulgee, in the creation of ‘7’, deconstructs the personal, concealing it through his meditative artistic process and the inscrutability of his reconstruction. The ethereal nature of the forms and their intimate interrelationship with the space is an interwoven, metallic veil. Yet though his personal messages are transposed into illegible forms, the forms themselves transcend their original content and become physical manifestations of Gulgee’s reality at the time of their creation, perhaps more completely than anything legible ever could.
‘7’ runs from the 31st of May to the 23rd of September. It is curated by Paolo de Grandis and Claudio Crescentini, and co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa.
