Asas is a reiteration of Syed Fakaruddin's discontinued painting development in 2014, tracing back his idea of images and objects, which is the basis for most of his artwork. Asas stands as a pivotal arc in his pursuit of artistic vision, weighing on a process of unlearning and relearning the element and principles of art. From the outset, Syed's new works comprise landscape, portrait and still life. But the concern is far from the representative and imagery but how the object of art, in this case, painting, can be liberated from its purely optical experience.
The artist raises the pertinent question: What is the materiality of painting? Trained as a sculptor, Syed is well aware of the tactility and the relationship between the object and space. Painting as a handmade manifests non-visual properties that are a trace of manual production, that everything one sees is the trace of a brush or a hand touching a canvas. A flat surface is not entirely void; it comprises a character denoting a presence. Syed's painting is filled with imageries; however, as they stand in the artist's postulation, they serve as a visage instead of a burden of narration.
Through Asas, Syed wanted to explore the utilization of objects beyond a beholder fetishism or the story or allegory; instead, he focused on the fact of painting itself as an object of intervention. In an attempt to strip down its pure visual attribute, Syed's endeavour in the idea of object helped reinstate his profound interest entrenched in spatiality. What is at stake here is the realization and actualization in making, charting through each canvas by concocting texture, connecting lines and reframing perspective.
