Muzzumil Ruheel’s augmented reality works are sculptures that exist only on the screen of a phone or tablet. They appear in the room around the viewer and change as the viewer moves, and without the device there is nothing to see.
Meeting Point
Meeting Point was shown at The Studio, India Art Fair, from 28 April to 1 May 2022. The fair’s description speaks of a layer of the world that is normally invisible, in which visitors move through an unsettling landscape of things that quietly exist there. Its subject is ghost words: language that is visible but silent, as if spoken and unheard, gathered around the viewer.
Small sounds
Ha Ha Ha repeats the Urdu syllable “Ha” until it coils into a spring-like form. Point, No, Ummm and Wow give the small sounds of everyday conversation a physical presence in space. They are the least formal parts of speech, the ones a transcript would drop, and the works keep them.
Why the medium
Ruheel’s subject is the unsaid. A word that can be seen and not heard, present to one person and absent to the next, is a fair description of much of his painting and sculpture, and here the condition is built into the medium. The augmented reality works follow a line through his practice, from calligraphy to abstraction to sculpture and then to a form with no material at all. The question stays the same: how an unspoken idea can be given form without becoming an illustration. See his Text-Based Sculpture and Text-Based Art.
Seeing the works
The works are viewed through the camera of a phone or tablet, in the space where the viewer is standing. For presentations and enquiries, contact the studio.
Enquiries
For enquiries about works, exhibitions and press, write to muzzumilstudio@gmail.com. Contact page