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The color of this painting is an agent of transformation that makes the
prison world illusive.
In the painting "Freedom of thought" Jaisini has built a form of time and
space that transforms the world of prison into a dream or a thought if a
philosopher, the artist himself, laying on a plank bed of the illusory prison
cell.
Freedom of Thought is populated with images of wicked criminals and guards.
However, the convicts do not carry ugly or realistic character references but
are portrayed with humor and irony. Two crooks are playing cards. One has an
Arabic-looking face with a purple nose. His partner's face, in some parts, is
a brick packing and his eye is shielded with bars. A brick background is also
found at the middle part of the painting that supports the miniature brick
structure of the con's face. A rat and an angry dog fight for a rotten fish.
At the upper right corner the weightless hazy scene of rape blends with a
flow of the composition where all personages conjoin in the obscure carnival
of confinement. Jaisini portrays himself as its participant. His position is,
nevertheless. the most calm. He is in a condition of concentrated thinking or
in a deep sleep. The jail, as a dream or a thought, becomes unreal and does
not exist. The question arises of what reality that is in the artist's
thought or dream, or the surrounding whirlpool world of the prison? Is this a
work of art, according to Scheider, considered as a kind of "dream turned
inside out"? The painting seems to be illusory owing to its amazing color and
its references to the old-fashioned lockup system. The state of the artist's
dream or thinking could be unreal as well. Then what is the reality in
"Freedom of Thought"? Maybe it is the "I," the creative self, which is pure
consciousness, the witness of these three states, the motive power to
survive, to create, to think. Jaisini's internal psychic flexibility permits
him identification with and portrayals of a wide range of characters and
themes.
A female guard is peeking at a well-built imprisoned man.
The artist shows that the quest for happiness was endless and vain for him
until he stopped searching outside for something that he was not able to find
in the world of senses and turned inward. "Freedom of Thought" is a work
that, in a way, illustrates the turning point of the human life when one
often gets back his ability to see the stars from the gates of hell, as Dante
writes. "My guide and I came on that hidden tunnel to make our way back into
the shining world; and with no time for rest, we climbed - he first, that I -
until I saw, through a round aperture, those things of beauty Heaven holds.
It was from there, at last, that we emerged to see again the stars."
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