But he more than made up for this literariness with a fine use of light andcolour, a new trend in his work. He has also picked up his father's sense ofirony, which comes out in a very sophisticated painting of a man in a boatrowing over a drowned man.Here the resemblance ends, for Shamshad's lyricaltreatment of Marquez' magical realism has a philosophically ethereal qualityabout it that one seldom finds in Husain. Shamshad seems not to skim thesurface in the sense of some of the racy renderings of the elder Husain. Hewants to be taken more seriously, with a proper understanding of hissensitivity.Owais, on the other hand, in his exhibition entitled How We'reLiving These Days stands at a distance from himself and weighs up the importof symbols changing their meanings before one's very eyes, leaving verylittle in our life that one can rely on any more.To communicate this painfulperception, it is no accident that Owais evokes the visual ambience ofartists of pre-World War II Germany, like Kathe Kollwitz, a hard look atreality. For they too faced the problem of creating an imagery that couldcope with the shift in meanings and the visual symbols that evolved withthem as part of Nazi propaganda.They highlighted the human essence, theworking class and the degeneration of those integrating with the neworder.

Owais takes on a similar exercise, putting issues like companionship andsurvival above theatricality, sex and violence in a knife-edge response.This requires a non-theatrical presentation with drama emerging from thetension between old and new visual symbols, something Owais handles verywell in the exhibition.

--Suneet Chopra