Some notes ABOUT MY WORK (a brief sample of local or regional anthropology at micro level):

The word "Gravity" is a symbol of reality that exists. Similarly E=mc2 is a combination of symbols trying to express some reality. In similar fashion my depiction of flashes (kashf) should be conceived that they are equations in language that nature uses. If “E” stand for “energy” and “=” stand for “equal to” and “m” for “mass” and so on, than in my flashes some wood or earth texture juxtaposed with some toy or any object could be some explanation of some phenomena in language that nature is accustomed to. Perhaps fate had dropped flashes in my lap and I am depicting these flashes for world to know how to derive knowledge out of these flashes. May be from Archetypal plane I am receiving flashes and transforming these into phenomenal plane, but for more perfect transformation, sponsorship is required, like flashes roughly depicted demands super realistic treatment or animations at some points, or arrangements in 3- Dimension or performing activities or etc. at some other points, because each of my work either illustrated or arranged for photo is a part of animation and is just a one shot from one angle of bigger reality, therefore I am not a sur-realist.

For deriving knowledge from my flashes their access to wider researchers in form of website, book, Museum, CD, video, etc. are required. And due to unavailability of resources, most of the paintings were sold before I could photographed these works which basically are like the fossils of the time and region and are done with hope that in future in order to get some data out of these works, the dimensions of anthropology, psychology, historiography, neurology, neuro-physics and other aspects will also be taken into account and the result may benefit in understanding some aspect of the complex Nature.

Nature is full of concepts like forms, colors, textures, sound, smell, time, taste, hunger, desire, romance, death, thoughts, light, dimensions and etc. and why nature chooses these different concepts in different composition, for instance: FORM in man, why Allah has choosed to place two eyes or say two hands with certain FORM, for Allah its also easy to give sight to the whole body, Allah can give any function to any form, therefore Allah knows the reason of His composition in His creations in which certain FORM is also very important, what scientists are exploring is function of every form has secondary importance bcause, Allah can give any function to any form, but its more difficult to explore reason of form, texture, color and etc. where an artist can collaborate to understand, and in romance, pain, hunger, poverty and etc. where a philospher, psychologist can collaborate to understand, in my case, I wonder, when Allah created the first man, the FORM came first or the function or word or names ? With particular texture, color and form flower came first or its name or its symbolism or archetypal dimension came first ? here lies the importance of Flashes to explore, because they are like comunication from nature, the language of which we do not know yet. why certain composition comes in my Flashes ? I do not know, I just record or illustrate these Flashes as a psychic fossils, thus I invite the viewer to explore "the tangibility of the intangible" as recorded in cover story of Dawn Gallery, May 17, 2008.

The importance of flashes can also be realized from the ripple effect observable in art and multi-media community that somehow came in contact with my work and hijacked ideology out of these flashes for their purpose, such benefits, scientific community has not taken yet out of these flashes. From art point of view the art community produced high quality variations out of my Flashes but their work lack archetypal dimension, which is one of the aspect, useful for scientific community to explore. For cataloguing purpose somewhere title or art terminology like: "oil on canvas", "collage", "performance", "installations", "construction", etc. are used has nothing to do with meaning of the work, flashes are independent of these terminologies borrowed from art history for cataloguing purpose only, flashes are beyond art. Flashes can include any ism, any element, bizarre thing, anything or things we don't know, that's why thousands of my flashes goes waste due to lack of energy and resources to record. Besides colorful images, performance and animation, Flashes also comes in form of sound as well, for instance I heard the sound: "Quranic archaeology is a mighty subject," this flash took me into the archaeology. For detail see at: quranicarchaeology.blogspot.com/ Please see my few recorded Flashes on address: www.flickr.com/photos/art-science-works/

Here I just want to share my personal recent refinement on my own analysis (with which you are free to agree or not), that perhaps I should confine myself to Flashes (or call it visions, images) which stay in my eyes just for less than a half second, perhaps for 0.01 second and I simply illustrate these Flashes and what it holds for future Fine Art, Science or Spirituality, I do not know yet. So I isolate myself from dada and sur-realism because I avoid title and avoid mixing my imagination or experimentation in recording of Flashes which is very rare or unrecorded. IN DADA AND SUR-REALISM WE DO READ ABOUT DREAMS AND DRUG INFUSED RANDOM THOUGHTS, BUT NOT FLASHES, SO FAR NO WORD ABOUT FLASHES I FIND EVEN IN FREUD OR JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY, THEY TALK ABOUT DREAM IMPORTANCE. And in Christian art history SO FAR I've only observed mixing of dream and inspiration from Bible. No body so far I have read in dada and sur-realism that somebody is claiming that he is depicting Flashes or depicting flashes without mixing his imagination or experimentation. But after seeing the difference between Flashes and work based on MIXING of imagination or experimentation, now I can pin point the Flash, mixed or unmixed*, so please never mix me with William Blake, Sohail Tassaduq, De Chirico, Carra, Magrette, because I am not competing in sur-realism, art aesthetic, or in painterly compositions, I have no experience of spirituality, so I request please do not also confuse me with any oriental mystic artists. MY WORK FROM (1974-81) OF INSTALLATIONS, PERFORMANCES BASED ON FLASHES IS STILL UNPUBLISHED, so new writers do not know about it. IN PAKISTANI ART ALSO SO FAR, NO ARTIST HAS EVER CLAIMED FLASHES mixed or un-mixed. For future science world, un-mixed FLASHES will be more important. If you come up with something related to SCIENCE OF FLASHES, please refer it. * NOTE: After seeing the difference between two, that is: (1)Pure Flashes and (2) some of my work based on MIXING of imagination or experimentation with Flashes, now I can pin point the Flash, mixed or unmixed. My unmixed are pure Flashes and to my mixed work(that is no:2) you can call it sur-realistic which I did for commercial reason on client's demand who was mad of sur-realism, I wish I could destroy these sur-realistic works.

Researchers are invited to reply on enigma of colorful flashes. From where they come? they come to all or to few,? Few interesting pieces of writing below could be the starting point for debate: One is by David V. Tansley in his book: 'Subtle body' , author writes,..."the pineal gland has been found to contain vestigial traces of optic tissue. Experiments have shown that nerve impulses arise in the pineal in response to stimulation by light. Galen claimed that the pineal was a regulator of thought, and the Greeks said that the soul was anchored there. According to esoteric tradition this gland is the focal point for the masculine positive energy of spirit which is represented by the first hexagram of l-Ching, its six yang lines symbolizing the primal power of heaven and the creative action of the holy man".

And another relevant thing here is about physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum (reported in the New York Times, 1984), that when inspiration came to Feigenbaum, it was in the form of a picture, a mental image of two small wavy forms and one big one. This gave him an idea about scaling, the way the small features of a thing relate to the large features, it gave him the path he needed. For period doubling, scaling showed not only when one value-a total population or a fluid speed-would break into two, but also just where the new values would be found, Scaling was an intimate feature of the peculiar world Feigenbaum was beginning to explore. Arthur I. Miller in a discussion of "redefining visualizability" makes it clear...the experimental evidence prevents us from forming a mental image bridging the wave-particle duality, such an image is available by 'Anschaulichheit' (German term for intuition, plus more) of another kind. It is the kind of image the physicist Werner Heisenberg had in mind when he asserted that, although the causality of classical mechanics has no access to quantum theory, quantum mechanics should not be considered unanschaulich, that is, excluded from imagery (Miller, Imagery in Scientific Thought). One example of such image is Albert Einstein's famous thought experiment in which he demonstrated the equivalence of inertia and gravitation by imagining an observer pulled through empty space in a closed container. Such images, however, lead by degrees of abstraction to others limited to spatial diagrams of a theoretical situation. Sigmund Freud, for example, writes, "We assume that the psychic life has the function of an apparatus, to which we attribute spatial extension and which we imagine as being composed of several pieces, similar to a telescope or microscope" Although such an image provides complementarity with a concrete percept of its models, it would not seem to provide it with a representable reality. But some physicists disagree that Niels Bohr never apply his notion of complementarity to subject other than physics. But for some physicists the contrary is true. From Rudolf Arnheim's essay: Complementarity from the outside. May be or may not be these above references are relevant here for flashes I do not know, but for scientific analysis it is important to state briefly here the background of how I realized the importance of these flashes, but for scientific cause I have to write what I should not. I hope my friends will forgive me for this cause, because for good Gestalt one should have all the possible details in mind, it is beyond humans to perceive Perfect Gestalt, only Allah knows everything.

In between, some works in form of small photo with ink or other media are what I called these: Today’s Miniature Works, it’s personal feeling that any other like me can also claim we never know what time can prove but thing should be recorded, this is what I am doing here. One of the experiments was a debate on miniature art, I told many, it should be saturated with current and regional issues or concepts, which I painted with brush and camera, etc. and called it Today’s Miniature Art, long before it became a trend. Indeed now it is much refined by our younger generation of artists, I hope they remember my small contribution untold to them. such miniatures along with other experiments of early 70’s I had shown to Bashir Mirza, Ali Imam, Ahmed Pervez, Jamil Naqsh, Imran Mir, Iqbal Jaffery, Naseem Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Ali Bhatti, Dr. Sajid Khan, Iqbal Durrani, Mohsin Zaidi and other artists and art collectors. But BM and Imam refused to exhibit these experiments (flashes) on ground that these experiments will become important in future, first I should make my name famous with super realistic sort of works, which they were selling easily, so I had to exhibit these experiments (flashes) at PACC, Karachi, Jan 8, 1979, about which Daily News reported: "Artist Bashir.Mirza inaugurated an exhibition of paintings by Saleem Mansoor, a 19-year old student at the PACC yesterday. Saleem has .a distinct talent in Art. He has painted old colonial houses in a remarkably sound representational style, he has to stick to this style in order to develop his aesthetic sense instead of delving into different styles".Daily News, Jan 9, 1979 This above small press coverage is evidence of my habit of delving into different styles and evidence of how brutally my Pakistani- avant gaurd works (that I did between 1974-1978 which were displayed in this 1979 exhibition) were brutally ignored by media. I invited Dr. Akbar Naqvi the only art critic I knew at that time, but he did not came, perhaps due to reason of event of Dec. 1974, when Ali Imam told me that Dr. Akbar is offering four hundred for your painting of nine hundred rupee, but I refused, after that I was never introduced to any art critic, nor Dr, Akbar wrote a word on me and not even in his book and other art historian also not included me in their books, and no comment I see in the catalogue of 2007- National exhibition, but can history ignore the influence of my Flashes recorded in an unmistakable solid resources other than these local sources ? If conceptualy analysed what Fine Art is all about ? than even two or three flashes from my 70's or early 80's (which Dr. Naqvi has seen) will have more wheight than works represented in local art books. This is not proudness on myself this is an admiration of gift from nature that I got in form of Flashes, although my depiction of Flashes is bad, because I have no proffessional art training nor I am better artist than many artists represented in local art books, on this ground Dr. Akbar Naqvi, S. Amjad Ali, Ejazul Hassan, Salwat Ali are right in not including me in their books. But I depict or record Flashes with realization that they are more important than Mona Lisa, E=mc2 or Taj Mahal. When I put all these before Marjorie she replied my email with these highly rewarding words: " What you have to say is extremely important, but you have always been way ahead of your time and environment. Mansoor, it is very hard to be a pioneer, but you are in the best of company in art history. Do not despair"---Marjorie Hussain, 5. 19. 2008, 9.03.am. Marjorie perhaps discovered me in 1983 through BM and Imam as her this recording shows:

"Saleem Mansur is an extremely interesting artist: "an artist's artist' as Ali Imam used to say. Bashir Mirza who juried Mansur's thesis work at the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts in 1983, was also numbered among the artist's admirers and on that occasion was greatly excited by the audacious innovations of the young "avant-garde' artist. Mansur was even then into installations, happenings and conceptual art, ....... In spite of the success in terms of the work, Mansur returned totally to the conceptual language that few understood. Those who did, considered him the most innovative and promising artist of his generation." ---Marjorie Hussain, Art Views, page.146. Published by fomma. And according to founder of fomma: Imran Mir (who knew me scince 1975) use to say... "because of his "Garage Series" Mansur was an artist before admission at CIAC" . To some extent he is right, since then I am like a scientist trying to record or understand the phenomenae of Flashes which immenssly influenced even the senior artists and since than I am enjoying the ripple effects of my Flashes that I exhibited between 1974-80, because of these years' work, Imam and BM passed highly praised words to Marjorie in my 1983 show at Pakistan Arts Council, Karachi, which Dr. Akbar Naqvi also saw (in 1984 display at the same place), but avoided to write and said I will see your next show. despite all these I still like him and all other art critics because of their love with fine art.

In late 70's some art students from KSA and CIAC came to my house and told me they have taken address from the back of my canvas at BM and Indus Galleries and developed a friendship and insisted me to take admission in their art school, I told them I am refusing my father who has managed my addmission in NCA on ground that I can not work on others' assignment, but among them Mohsin Zaidi gave me inside story and assurrance that at CIAC I will have full freedom to do my own experiments, I decided to register at CIAC in 1981 where for new audience I repeated most of my earlier works for photo and film recording the facility of which I found among new friends and all these recording I took NCA (1981) to show it there as well to check the ripple effect of my Flashes and later I exhibited at NAG, Islamabad, Al-Hamra, Lahore (1984) about which Yasin Muhammad, Salima Hashmi, Ghulam Nabi and others wrote good comments. For press coverage Click Here

It was not important for me to call my small size works as "todays miniature art", because these recording of flashes are blue print for performmance, installations, 3D animation, etc., and these are blue print for science as well as specialist of quantum physics Thomas Young says, if we isolate light particle from other particle than its duplicate takes its place and that duplicate comes from other universe or from else we do not know yet but it certainly shows we all have our duplicates including universe within universe. Beyond particle there is particle-Less field in atom to which Euorpean physicst call God-particle, this field if it is realy particle-Less perhaps is a curtain between the world and the other worlds of spirits, jins, angels, etc. visible after death only and not through telescope, space ship, microscope, etc. so flashes could be the LINK with the other worlds we have yet to understand. It looks to me all the flashes came to me in one night of 1973 or 1974 and scince then I am trying to somehow to capture them in notes or in illustration and in this effort flashes do come back one by one but still my energy and skill is not sufficient to record all those moving and still flashes, I hired one video recorder in 1981 through Sadiq of CIAC to record such Flashes but budget did not allowed to refine it or to produce more. What ever Flashes I recorded between 1974-1982 is my work that has immense ripple effects without any economical reward.

See 1981 film recording which include Flash works. If executed with high resources,most of my Flashes (done between 1973-81) illustrated in this set of CD or in other collections are works in concept on higher plane and ahead of Malaveich, Oldenberg, Raushenberg, Robert Moris, Jasper John, Christo, Jackson Pollock, Donald Judd and etc. But still their execution with my little resources inspired many resourcefull groups of qualified artists, writers, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, journalists architects and my flashes also inspired highly intellectual people behind Lari & associates, Shisha, Shanakht, Carce, vm, green cardamom, ivsaa, Fomma, vasl, vsdku and etc. that in their works I have observed direct influence of ideologies, imageries derived out of my flashes. For assessment of the influence, historiographical approach is required.

A year before Metric and much before Diploma in fine art, my art works (flashes) since 1974 were on display at Atelier BM and at Indus gallery, and since then I am observing the ripple effect of those works. After solo show of my works at Pakistan American Cultural Center, January 1979, I went to CIAC, Karachi Arts Council, to check effects of my art and science works among artists. Before flashes since 1973 I was only doing super realistic sort of paintings of surrounding and of interior Sindh culture and capturing the local environment to come up with something: Pakistani avant-garde which I displayed at PACC solo show in Jan. 1979. But was ignored by media, only small press coverage came with a suggestion: "Mansoor has to stick to his remarkably sound realistic style instead of delving into many styles". (Art show, Daily News, Jan. 9, 1979). But anyhow I was realizing the importance of my flashes which were inspiring the most intelligent and talented of artist community for example: Ghalib Baqar changed his Dali sort of Sur realism into experimental water color, other water colorists like Abdul Hayee, Ather Jamal, Zahin Ahmad, Hanif Shezad, etc. added Karachi and interior Sindh imagery into their work.

One of world's best super realist artist Shakil Siddiquei changed his Rembrandt sort of style into super realistic abstraction, for instance his paintings of Book shelf, Notice board, door, windows, composition with Dawn news paper, Sindhi dari, fruit packing wooden peyti, Chilmun and etc., in subject matter, were directly inspired by my flashes in form of photos or artworks I shared with him. Art critic Dr. S. Amjad Ali in his article: "Growing trend towards realism", wrote;..."Saleem Mansoor was the first to begin this kind of realism in Karachi but he was well advised to give up after creating a few interesting pieces. It is a good way of gaining command over technique and then putting it to other use in which more thought and feeling comes into play." (Dawn, April 20, 1984). Ejazul Hassan wrote in Page 17, 123 in the catalogue of 5th National Exhibition, 1985, Published by Idara Saqafat Pakistan, written by Ejazul Husan. "Young Mansoor Saleem has his own unusual way with objects and space. He sometimes likes to call his work as "installation" in the environment around him. He always wants to place things where he thinks these should be placed. The coiled wire, with a crescent on top, placed on a gray composition is evidence of his restless imagination. The title "Pakistani Avnet Garde" also shows his wit." (—page 123, Ejazul Husan) "The young painter Saleem Mansoor....investigates new methods and techniques not only meant to widen the scope and definition of realism but also to discover fresh methods to stimulate the viewers' response. His 'painting' titled The Pakistani Avant-garde' is wittily fabricated with tan-gue-in-cheek humor making an apt comment on elitist attitudes and trends in modern art."—(page: 17, from the introduction of 5th National Exhibition by Ejazul Hasan).

Most helping and highly creative artist and multi media man Imran Mir in 1975 appreciated my work in high remarks when he was discussing with Bashir Mirza at Atelier BM. BM was telling him that before going to Canada what Imran observed in art scene was still the same when he returned after many years, that Ahmed Pervaiz is repeating Allen Davy, and Shakir Ali, Mansur Rahi and their students were repeating Picasso and Braque's cubism in Indian or Bengali styles and Jamil Naqsh, Lubna Agha, Mansur Aye, Mashkoor, and others are repeating the same compositions, Rabia Zuberi and Shahid Sajjad repeating Henry Moor and so on. Imran pointing towards my work replied: "he is the change"! and BM acknowledged it. Imran like Zahoor ul Akhlaque also absorbed important elements from my flashes but both only absorbed postmodern art-elements from my flashes (but they absorbed postmodern element from other sources also like we see in work of Herbert Bayer, Jennifer Bartlett, Ross Blacker, Sean Scully and etc), which not much is my concerned. During my slide show at NCA in 1981, Zahoor and his wife asked me about my future plan, they were surprised to hear that I will soon be joining Archaeology Department in some university because from inside I am an anthropologist also. All my work is not only a statement in anthropology, but is also a statement in neurology, physics, and other sciences. Imran sincerely wanted to bring post modern trends in the region, perhaps for variety he introduced me to many artists, for instance, one day Imran came to me and carried my work's photos in his car and took me to David Alesworth's house and showed my work to him and his wife Durriya and Imran told them to do something like that and after one month of that, Imran's wife Nighat, told me; "Mansoor! You know Durriya is taking your sort of Truck art from Karachi to Peshawar". Nighat was saying that because she much before this event has written an article in press on my 1977 Truck art collection and Sara Irshad has written on my 1981 work: "Taking art show on donkey cart to the folk". Durriya and David not only took the advantage of my flashes but others also followed similar ideology, for instance Ruby Chisti, Masooma Syed, Naiza Khan, Adeela Khan, Rashid Rana, Noorjehn Bilgramy, Huma Mulji, Farida Batool, Ali Raza, Sophie Ernst, Faiza But, M. Ali Talpur, Imran Qureshi, Ameen Gulgee, Jamal Shah, Nazish Ataullah, Aaisha Khalid, Risham Syed and many others who spread the ideology to Melbourne, Dubai, London, New York, etc.

Before their first thesis, IVSAA'S principal invited me for slide show of my work, but to my surprise only the faculty staff was invited and not the students. After a month or so one of the faculty member Kamran Hamid told me, "Mansoor go and see student's thesis at IVSAA where teachers has influenced students to do work which is similar to your ideology"." Now it is a tradition there. Even their very architecture is based on the ideology of some of my old flashes and on article published in press. Despite their ignorance I still like IVSAA for their spirit to move forward.

Against me, I even find wrong propaganda by hijackers of my work. And rather through lobby in media they even sensor or edit my interviews according to their need of representing me with those works which they have not preferred to hijack from my flashes. In Shisha, Shanakht, Carce, IVSAA, Fomma, VASL and VSDKU works I have observed direct influence of ideologies, imageries derived out of my flashes. For assessment of the influence, historiographical approach is required. For commercial reason, they can ignore me too but future history will not. Local art magazine and art book writers were chased to ignore me If media is free or they have no lobby system, than why merit is ignored in my case, why Dawn's Gallery, The News, Jung, avoid covering my art shows. I also held slide show of the work at NCA in 1981, where Zahoor-ul-Akhlaque, his wife and his students saw the show. Salima Hashmi wrote an article on my exhibition at Alhambra gallery Lahore, in March, 1984. The effort bore its fruit, through historiography one can trace after 1981, the change in NCA and change in Zahoor, Ejazul Hasan, Salima Hashmi, Shahid Sajjad, Mehar Afroze, etc., and change in their younger generation of students. They and other agents and technology (since 1974 perhaps) spread the influence of my flashes abroad as well, for instance on Beverly Pepper, Nicole Eisenman, Anish Kapoor, Mohsin Zaidi, Susanne Kessler and etc. Etc. All the names mentioned above have the right to disagree with me, these are just friendly assumptions for researchers to look at such debate too to guess what the flashes are? I too was inspired by many but after receiving Flashes from nature, I painted these with realization that they are more important than Mona Lisa, E=mc2 or Taj Mahal. I have no solo shows in prestigious gallery abroad I have no big post, scholarship or any sponsorship or awards, etc. But what Nature has given me in form of Flashes is more important that they are prototype for all time to come, back to the future or forward into the past. All artists are free to make anything they wish or according to market Forces but I have to make (for science) what I receive in form of flashes. Historiographicaly speaking Flashes' influence is more than what the work of Shakir Ali, Sadequein, Gulgee, M.F. Hussain and etc. had. But no comment I see in the catalogue of 2007- National exhibition, even the Karachiets have ignored me too, but not artchowk.com, I admire the support I am getting from people behind artchowk. I need Du'a to continue the mission, if possible Inshallah. ......MS