Fahd Burki

Pakistani artist Fahd Burki (born 1981) makes work that spans painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, and ranges in scope from surreal figuration to minimalist abstraction. This book accompanies his first mid-career survey, gathering over 50 works from the past 15 years of his extensive and diverse practice.

The first monograph devoted to Lahore-based artist Fahd Burki, covering a decade of his works on paper.

Born in 1981 in Lahore, Pakistan, Fahd Burki graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2003 and received a Postgraduate Diploma from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 2010.

Over the last 10 years Burki has received much recognition and appreciation for his intriguing imagery, and awarded the ‘John Jones Art on Paper Award’ at Art Dubai in 2013. Burki employs acrylic, charcoal, marker pen, and collage, as well as screen printing. He frequently uses abstract graphic fields containing a central form or figure that dominates the picture plane. The artist draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, from tribal folk art to science fiction. Although his sharp-edged forms can be seen to refer to the type of icons associated with digital media, they are all painstakingly produced by hand. These often playful but also at times menacing icons and symbols are harvested from his personal mythology of the present, and are both disconcertingly familiar and completely novel.

Murtaza Vali is a Brooklyn-based writer, art historian, and curator, and contributing editor of ArtAsiaPacific. Rosa Maria Falvo is a writer and curator, and Skira’s international commissions editor.