The exhibition The Road Taken by New York-based artist, Fawad Khan, at the Shrine Empire Gallery displays works in gouache, acrylic, ink and collage as well as a large-scale animation. The entire show revolves around cars and other automobiles in various states of collision, explosion and disintegration. The artist has used the car as a metaphor for the violent post-cold world war where terror has become the omnipresent international enemy. The violent explosions of Fawad Khan’s work combine the rising issue of civil and international war that is spreading all over the world with several automotive motifs.
The artist has also used the automobile to represent different cultural experiences and influences throughout his life. Of Pakistani roots, born in Libya and growing up in suburban Maryland, Khan focuses on car bombs, Pakistani buses and US muscle cars, all interacting with each other, especially through paintings set in grids. Cars and car parts are shown in a state of deconstruction and disintegration: upturned, crushed, falling, and spiraling through the air. The police and army vehicles represent the state and authority that is being constantly challenged, the hippie, flower power cars probably suggest the peacenik element in society and the old cars the decay of the civilised world.
The automotive industry is a symbol and invention of the capitalist West, representing finance, industry, materialism, consumerism, environmental degradation — in fact, all that ails post modern society today. And through these works the artist questions the use of the automobile, an invention used originally for the convenience of transportation but becoming more and more a tool of destruction; indeed one might say that cars are both the vehicle (pun not intended) and target of terrorism. This comes through in the juxtaposition of battle fatigues flying out of spiraling cars, out of control, flaying and powerless against forces of deliberate destruction and annihilation
Given the violence of the object and the thematic, the treatment is surprisingly delicate. The colours are soft and secondary, the application of the gouache and acrylic transparent and well handled. The artist has used blank spaces on the periphery of the painting to emphasise the main object and also focus on speed and the impact of the implosion and explosion on the vehicle.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic