Between the Lines

Between the Lines began with the most elementary act of drawing: making a line. Curated by Rom Levy in Dubai in May 2016, the group exhibition used that shared starting point to bring painting, typography, geometry and abstraction into conversation.

The artists included Andrew Schoultz, Andrew Faris, RETNA, Paul Insect, BAST, eL Seed, Jenny Sharaf, Kenton Parker and Word To Mother. Their practices showed how a mark could become a script, a figure, a pattern or a spatial structure. Connections between street-based experience and studio work emerged through the works themselves, rather than through a single stylistic definition of urban art.

RETNA’s calligraphic systems and Faris’ geometric arrangements offered very different accounts of the line’s capacity to carry meaning. Across the exhibition, visual languages shaped by different cities and traditions were brought into a shared setting in Dubai.

The show considered urban contemporary art as an evolving field whose origins remain visible even as its contexts change. Its curatorial focus was on what the artists do with a fundamental element of image-making, and how those individual decisions connect a diverse group of practices.