Untitled

That Altaf was a highly sensitive social being is well-known. What, however, needs to be grasped is the trauma he must have endured in rendering the solemn reality around him on the canvas. The grim monochrome palette alludes to a dark episode in the life of people depicted. While the front row shows physically discernible people, it’s the two rows at the back that lend gravitas to the work. Are those people reduced to images in a gloomy statistical table? Or, are those individuals behind an invisible barrier that separates them from the privileged, the viewer, perhaps?