Jasim Al-Zadjali's Graphic Art Exhibition

Jasim Al-Zadjali Graphic Art Exhibition, Muscat City Centre - July 29th, 2005

Oman's first graphic art exhibition was held on the 29th of July 2005 at Muscat City Centre and we were there to see it with our own eyes. The exhibition that was sponsored by Al-Watan Newspaper and Oman Tribune was in fact a showcase of the personal work of the Omani artist Jasim Al-Zadjali. The exhibition featured around 31 pieces of graphical works printed in A2 sized paper that were displayed in City Centre's usual exhibiting manner where individual artworks were hanged on slim movable cardboards.

"Senses of Letters" is the title of the exhibition that followed the theme of Omani poetry. Jasim inspired each of his designs from a different Omani literary work making the exhibition a materialisation of the beauty of Omani poetry into awesome visual exhibition. We were impressed by Jasim's colourful poetic blends of Arabic calligraphy and gradient fills in canvases showing oceans of words at one instance and showers of random letters at another. Jasim's creativity shined most when dealing with the delicate Arabic script at scenes that featured two or more letters molten together to form meaningful shapes and objects relevant to the background in question such as a ship of letters sailing in a fantastic ocean of shades of blue. Visitors of the exhibition were given a free booklet featuring all the design displayed along with the text of the poem that inspired the work.

We were greatly impressed by Jasim's artistic vision and graphical artwork, yet we could not escape the feeling of extreme repetition in the works, one person can only do so much of typography work of the same theme and same canvas dimensions. While the exhibition area was spacious and the fact that it was at Muscat City Centre provided the event with great exposure, we had to complain about those school-days-boards that took away some of the ambience of the designs displayed.

While We learnt from Jasim himself that he created his whole collection using Adobe Photoshop, it is worth mentioning that regardless of the fact that this was an exhibition of graphical artwork, there were no details on any of the technical details of how these images were created, pixel count, or even printing details. Those details are nowhere to be found around the exhibition, nor in the exhibition's special booklet.

Jasim's exhibition was a great experience for us to learn more about Omani arts and poetry. We are glad to see some sort of local interest in graphics yet we hope to see a more professional way of presenting the artwork to the public. The least we can expect from a graphical design exhibition, even if it was a personal exhibition, is for it to have a website with samples of the work and details that could satisfy the thirst of those interested in the Omani graphics and arts.