Untitled

In his diary entry predating this collage work by ten days, Altaf writes: ‘My paintings are a series of questions and yet the many who think they understand, believe they are a series of answers—my answers’. It is cryptic but makes perfect sense with the work in consideration, where he additionally writes the word ‘lost’ and the phrase ‘and here too’, in the space between what appears to be a maze leading nowhere. The young artist was on his way back to India from London, and was precisely in the Middle East when he created this work, and the maze could be a sub-conscious expression of directionlessness that he was experiencing at that time