KARACHI: The expression ‘embarrassment of riches’ is not just meaningful, but has tremendous auditory value. It implies having more choices than you know how to deal with. The auditory aspect lies in the fact that at first it sounds oxymoronic. It is not. Once you realise that it is not, you begin to enjoy its connotation.

A group show with nearly five-dozen participants titled Potpourri,which is under way at the Koel Art Gallery, has a huge variety of eye-catching artworks, so much so, that it feels as a viewer you are pressed for time to spend some waqt with them in order to get their drift.

What the gallery has done to facilitate art lovers who are either linguistically challenged or may not be familiar with foreign sounding words that it has provided them with the meaning of the exhibition’s title: ‘Potpourri – (noun) – a mixture of dried petals and spices placed in a bowl to perfume a room.’

In other words, there’s a huge variety on display to look and marvel at. So it is not important to find a common thread between them, because the shared factor is the high quality of craft and piercing imagination of the artists. This is where the evenness of technique comes to the fore, as explained by organisers of the show through a quote by Henry Poincare: “It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details.”

Symmetry is key, make no mistake. However, here it is referred to not in a mathematical sense — or not in that sense alone. Rather, the balance alluded to in the quote comes about when the story and the storytelling merge into each other with aesthetic grace.

The exhibition concludes on April 29.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2023