Points of view

Iranian-American artist Rafael Mahdavi and Pakistani artist Mansour Salim have "Two Takes on Reality" to offer visitors at their joint exhibition in Dubai. While Mahdavi's landscapes symbolise his memories, Salim's paintings play on the boundary of reality and illusion.

Mahdavi recalled that his mother used to take him to the Museo del Prado in Madrid when he was 10. And there he fell in love with the works of Velazquez and Goya. "I began making copies of the masterworks in pencil," he said.

Born in 1946 in Mexico to an American mother and Iranian father, Mahdavi attended boarding schools in England, Madrid and Vienna where he also earned a bachelors degree. He then went to the United States and after two years at the University of Rochester and then Cranbrook Academy of Art, completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Mahdavi has been a professor at the Parsons School of Design in Paris since 1982. He also teaches drawing at the Ecole Superieure d'Art et Design in Amiens and at Strate College of Design in Issy-les-Moulineaux.

"A good painting reveals itself between the brush strokes and beyond what is obvious. I can't tell you exactly what a painting is about, the way I can't tell you what a poem is about precisely. But I can try and tell you what I had in mind when I painted these canvases," Mahdavi said.

Mahdavi has 20 works "all painted, some photo-transfers", on show at Two Takes on Reality. "Seven paintings from 1994 to 1996 are about memory. Each work is vertically or horizontally symmetrical. The symmetry is not always obvious. Memory is not obvious — what you remember and what actually happened. How do you begin to put it all back together again? Seven paintings from 2007 to 2009 are landscapes in which surprising things have happened, are happening or will happen. The six small paintings from 2008 are about roses, lace, a shell and a labyrinth. Hopefully you will look at these paintings and draw meaning from them, not just now, but in the years to come."

What is the message the artist is trying to deliver through his paintings? "I don't believe in conveying messages through art. Nor do I believe in art for art's sake. I think art should be for the people. It should generate meaning over a long time."

Unleashed creativity

Mahdavi admires Diego Velazquez, Michelangelo Merisi "Caravaggio", Antonio López Garía, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. "Their works are full of intrigue and quiet chaos." But he does not belong to any school of art. "I am a nowhere and everywhere man," he said.

For Salim, however, art is a journey which begins with flashes and visions from a metaphysical plane which he translates on to media "for others to study and understand".

"My depiction of flashes (kashf) should be conceived as equations in the language nature uses. ... Perhaps fate had dropped flashes in my lap and I am depicting [them] for the world to know how to derive meaning from them," Salim said. "[It is for the viewers] to study my works and decipher the meaning of my flashes. I am not a Surrealist or a mystic artist, I am simply a conduit for knowledge and ideas."

Salim completed his MA in general history with specialisation in archaeology from Karachi University in 1988. He was a lecturer at the university until 1996. He has participated in excavations by the University of California at Berkeley at Harappa, an Indus Valley archaeological site. He took part in a field archaeology course conducted by the Pakistan Archaeology Department in 1987. He also completed a diploma in fine arts at the Sindh Board of Technical Education, Karachi, in 1983.

"Nature is full of textures, sounds, smells, tastes, desires, romance, death, thoughts, hunger, light, dimensions, etc. Why nature chooses these different concepts for different compositions, I do not know. For instance in man, why has Allah chosen to place two eyes or two hands in a certain form?

"I illustrate these flashes and invite the viewer to explore them through my art. My flashes can come in any form. Thousands of my flashes go unrecorded due to lack of energy and resources. Besides colourful images, performance and animation, flashes come in the form of sound too. For instance I heard the sound: "Quran archaeology is a mighty subject," this flash took me into archaeology which is reflected in my canvases," he said.

Salim is exhibiting 18 paintings at Two Takes on Reality. "My work is merely a transformation of an idea into an understandable state."

Salim has held many solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions since 1979. His solo exhibitions started at the Pakistan American Cultural Centre in Karachi. His last exhibition was held in May 2008 at Clifton in Karachi. In 1985 his works were part of a group exhibition at the lndus Gallery in Karachi.