Seher Shah, Cross Conference Scheme, from the Manual for Treason, 2011, digital print, 36 x 48 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

'The plan proceeds from within to without; the exterior is the result of an interior. The elements of architecture and light and shade, walls and space. Arrangement is the gradation of aims, the classification of intentions. 

Man looks at the creation of architecture with his eyes, which are 5 feet 6 inches from the ground. One can only consider aims which the eye can appreciate and intentions which take into account architectural elements. If there come into play intentions which do not speak the language of architecture, you arrive at the illusion of plans, you transgress the rules of the Plan through an error in conception, or through a leaning towards empty show.'

The Illusion of Plans

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (1923)

Seher Shah, Object Relic (Unite d'Habitation), 2011, graphite and gouache on paper, 183 x 275 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, Dubai.

 

Seher Shah, Unit Object (bent), 2011, graphite and gouache on paper, 56 x 76 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, Dubai.

Seher Shah, Unit Object (block), 2011, graphite and gouache on paper, 56 x 76 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, Dubai.

Seher Shah, Unit Object (plane shift), 2011, graphite and gouache on paper, 56 x 76 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, Dubai.

'The thesis of Francois Jullien's In Praise of Blandness is that we are so saturated with aesthetic choices that the idea of blandness or blankness is almost attractive. It is interesting to think of blandness as a necessary relief from endless permutations in contemporary realities, though blandness is itself an aesthetic choice which relates back to the Modernist maxim of 'less is more'.

Drawing allows freedom in terms of representations of space where contradictory and parallel ideas, as well as shifts in scale, can exist simultaneously.'

From Brute Ornament, A conversation with Kamrooz Aram and Seher Shah by Murtaza Vali (2012)

Seher Shah, Untitled (walls), 2010, graphite and gouache on paper, 183 x 183 cm, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Green Art Gallery, Dubai.

 

From Brute Ornament: a two-person exhibition featuring the works of Kamrooz Aram & Seher Shah, curated by Murtaza Vali, at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2012.