WISHES IN SEPIA BY FAIZ ZA

Wishes in Sepia conveys Faiz ZA’s interest in exploring old memoirs of treasured photographs that belong to his father during his younger age. This exhibition is almost like a homage from Faiz –  where these photographs of momentous events deemed significant to his father were construed and re-painted into his elaborate artistic exertion.

Faiz ZA is an artist who is very industrious in depicting his subject matter. Majoring in painting in his former education, he was trained in a school that stresses formalistic aspects of art and progresses the gained knowledge towards a pretty unconventional approach. Over the years, he has been perfecting his distinctive reverse painting technique, or we could describe it as the counter technique – where his subject is painted not by capturing the shadows but by heightening the value of lights.

Except in Faiz’s art-making, he is the ‘lens’, and the black-filled canvas is like the sensitised film where the image on the canvas depends on how Faiz re-interprets or ‘reflects’ his father’s photographs. Although he admitted that he has less to no connection to the people or the events that were captured, taking time to repaint them brings him into reliving those days in the photographs. The aspect of time in making these artworks inadvertently brought Faiz in-depth contemplation on his encounter with those photographs, hence giving them a new breath of interpretation on the canvas.

Some aspects found in Faiz’s paintings also provide a nostalgic impact for the audience who sees his work. More often than not, old photographs are nostalgic enough with their colours and subdued light, but the resulting paintings that Faiz has made add more aesthetic ambiances due to the effect of the gritty surface of the canvas, the Sepia colour, and also the artist’s unique lighting technique. It is a complementary body of works between the photographs and the artworks – giving these photographs a new light while still doing justice in trying to preserve the emotional affection when one witness the artworks.

Wishes in Sepia runs from 3 to 17 September 2022 at Hall 2, G13 Gallery.

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• Faiz ZA