Rashid Rana
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Rashid Rana
Rashid Rana heads the fine arts department at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He has participated in a large number of solos and group shows, both at home and abroad. He claims that one of his paintings, auctioned last September at Christie’s, got him the highest price paid to any Pakistani artist till then. The figure was in later months surpassed.
At Art Dubai, Rashid is being represented by a 9x9x9 feet large stainless steel structure with photographs embedded on it. He claims that the structure will appear different from varied viewpoints. For instance, from a distance it would look like a skyscraper, but on closer inspection it would give the impression of a cluster of a wide variety of houses in Lahore.
“In Rashid Rana, the 21st century is deceptively glossy, the Ironical undercurrents play hide and seek with viewers.”
“In today’s environment of uncertainty, we cannot have the privilege of a single worldview. Every image or idea also carries a different meaning and significance. This kind of duality, which extends to the internal self, portrays in my work a series of ambiguities - geographical, historical and political.
“My formal concerns focus on the problem of working in two dimensions. And my fascination with optical devices, such as mirror images, perhaps underscores the essential unreality of art; distancing me from the task of representation, and indicting that contemporary information machineries can only produce truth but they can never simply depict it,” reads the artist’s statement.
Desperately seeking paradise, C print + DIASEC and steel, 9x9x9ft (right); image details (below)