Rashid Rana
March 28 - April 28, 201129 Bell Street, London
Press Release
Lisson Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of work by Rashid Rana. Rana is widely considered to be the most prominent and original contemporary artist working in South Asia today. Through his work Rana explores constructs of media and identity, reflecting upon and critiquing the impact of globalisation worldwide whilst simultaneously exploring the local and competing influences of tradition and modernity in contemporary South Asia and Pakistan.
Lisson Gallery’s Curatorial Director Greg Hilty says, “Rashid Rana’s work demonstrates a powerful interplay between formal structure and highly charged content, creating a genuine hybrid of Asian and Western artistic traditions.”
In the exhibition at Lisson Rana will present a series of key works in which he redeploys photographic imagery in varied formats including installation, sculpture, and large-scale photographic prints. These works see Rana drawing on techniques such as pixelation to problematise and reconfigure the relationship between part and whole, fragment and meaning.
The photographic sculpture, Books (2010, UV Inkjet print on aluminium), features images of books layered on blocks that themselves resemble books. The work both maps and manipulates the distance between idea and object, representation and reality. Here Rana challenges our understanding of three-dimensional forms through the use of pixelated imagery, pixelation being more commonly associated with two-dimensionality.
The shift between two and three dimensionality is further explored in a large-scale stainless steel cube sliced through with a photographic mosaic of image fragments. In this work, Rana manipulates reflection and printed imagery to create tension between surface and depth.
Also on display at Lisson will be a number of large-scale photographic works that Rana sees as ‘unpacking abstraction’. From a distance these works have the appearance of richly textured, patterned abstract compositions. However, on closer inspection, each work is revealed to be formed from thousands of smaller context specific digital images that offset the perceived serenity of the larger image.
A new monograph on the artist has recently been published by Chatterjee & Lal and Gallery Chemould Prescott Road and will be available for purchase during the course of the exhibition.
About the artist
Rashid Rana (b1968) lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. Solo exhibitions include Musee Guimet, Paris (2010); Art Public – Cabinet P.H., Geneva (2007); Chemould Prescott Road + Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai (2007); Nature Morte, New Delhi (2007); Philips Contemporary, Mumbai (2007). Group exhibitions include Saatchi Gallery, London (2010); Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland, Australia (2010); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010); Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena (2010); Devi Foundation, New Delhi (2010);National Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (2009); Asia Society, New York (2009).
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Exhibition Images
Language Series 1 2010-11 LightJet Print + DIASEC 360 x 270 cm
Language Series 1 2010-11 detail
Language Series 2 2010-11 LightJet Print + DIASEC 335.28 x 270.32 cm
Language Series 2 2010-11 detail
A Plinth from a gallery in Lahore 2010-11 UV inkjet Print on Aluminium 36 x 36 x 100 cm
Desperately Seeking Paradise II 2010-11 UV print on aluminium and stainless steel 386.4 x 386.4 x 332.1 cm
Tenacious Structures 2010-11 UV Print on Aluminium and Stainless Steel 122 x 122 x 122 cm
Installation view, Lisson Gallery, London
What Lies Between Flesh and Blood III 2009 LightJet Print + DIASEC 243.84 x 243.84 cm
The STEP2010-11 UV Print on Aluminium 15.96 x 45.6 x 22.8 cm
Books-2 2010-11 UV inkjet Print on Aluminium 62 x 62 x 62 cm