Exhibition: Whose line is it anyway?

KARACHI: Swiss artist Paul Klee perhaps said it best: lines are dots that went for a walk. And this has been the inspiration for Mohsin Jaffri, whose ‘Linear Dimensions’ goes on display at the VM Art Gallery today at 5:30pm.

Jaffri took this as a point of departure (no pun intended) for this near-Pollackesque series in which a tangle of lines, almost based on a horizontal axis, loop in and out of each other with colour filled in. Lines are perhaps the perfect metaphor for our lives. They signify maps and “charting” as Jaffri puts it. “A journey begins with a singular dot and leaves behind an intricate trail of lines,” he says in his statement. Our lives are just that. But instead of an expected linear progression, we digress, go off track, get tangled up, and generally head in directions we never expected to take.

For Jaffri, lines can be grained, static, constant, playful and staid. Like our lives, they can merge and part, be partial or complete.

“Lines create an experience beyond the literal,” said artist and writer Linda Saccoccio. “There is so much potential in losing and finding the line again. Like letting go and being awakened. Lines, like music, create potential for mystery.”

Jaffri adds colour in the spaces for as we navigate we experience a range of different emotions, which can be depicted by different colours at different times. “Yet, just like the lines sketched on the human palm are woven by our choices, these colours come to life because of the capacity of the human heart to feel,” he says. “So ultimately, what we feel comes to life in an endless stream of colours around us.”

For Jaffri, the line also holds a more personal meaning as he is a journalist as well as an artist. And while his journey as an artist began in England, he confesses that there was some other motive to start. “A dear friend of mine was taking art lessons there and my interest in seeking enrolment was spurred mostly by my desire to spend more time with her.” However, what started as a casual interest in art slowly developed into a deep passion and became a life-long appreciation.

Jaffri resettled in Karachi after spending about 35 years in the UK, US and Saudi Arabia.

The exhibition will be open daily from 10:30 am to 7:30 pm till January 8.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 29^th, 2010.