KARACHI: “It is the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting,” writes Paulo Coelho in one of his books. Even if you are not a fan of the celebrated author, it would be hard to disagree with this notion. By life being interesting he implies an attempt at achieving the all elusive ideal existence.

This seems to be the concept behind an exhibition of artist Farooq Mustafa’s latest body of work titled Yume no machi (City of Dreams) under way at the Art Chowk Gallery.

Farooq has lived in Japan. He likes the country and its conventions very much. The artist is also fond of his roots in Pakistan. This duality in love, so to speak, has turned him, at least on the evidence of this exhibition, into a dreamer. But the act of dreaming doesn’t enter a surreal domain where abstraction moves in the foreground and reality plays second fiddle to it. His dreams are concrete, albeit on an aesthetic level.

I Once Crossed This City in a Dream II

The artwork ‘Walled city in my dream 1’ (mixed media on canvas) gives away his intentions in clear terms. It is the confluence of two worlds that the artist is aiming to accomplish. And on the level of artistic expression he achieves his goal. He’s able to do that because of the use of bold colours and some markers which you usually see in geographic illustrations.

What’s interesting to see is that while on the one hand he dishes out solid images in a dream-like location, on the other hand the slight shift in the use of colours indicates the change in the mood not just of the artwork but of the artist as well. In that context, ‘I once crossed this city in a dream II’ is an apt example. Here the redness of the sky makes the viewer overlook the scene that the artist has created on the ground and tends to contemplate the sky which has a sad aura about it. So the city of dreams may not be a city where happiness could be found. Just a thought!

The exhibition will run till Jan 16.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2015

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