Important Notice

The present lot is part of Rana's Ommatidia series, named for the term which defines the bio-structural components that hold together the multiple lenses that form the compound eye of a housefly. As suggested by the title, the works in this series are "pixellated" reproductions of popular poster images of Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan (the subject in the present lot). The photographic montage of the actor... The present lot is part of Rana's Ommatidia series, named for the term which defines the bio-structural components that hold together the multiple lenses that form the compound eye of a housefly. As suggested by the title, the works in this series are "pixellated" reproductions of popular poster images of Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan (the subject in the present lot). The photographic montage of the actor - an idolised figure in India and South Asia - is composed of several thousand photographs of ordinary young men taken from the streets of Lahore. "Tiny documentary photographs taken in the chaotic streets of Lahore provide a wider picture of celebrity as figment; a mass media construct sustained by the projected, collective dreams and aspirations of ordinary Pakistani society as it jostles politically and culturally with neighbouring India." (Ulanda Blair, Flash, Victoria: Centre for Contemporary Photography, March-June 2007, p. 9)

The resulting effect serves to shift the viewer's focus from the idol to the structures that construct and support his heroic image, literally as well as metaphorically. "Visually, Rana's prints are large, sometimes even heroic in scale, and they appear from a distance as slightly blurred, low-resolution renditions of banalities: landscapes, film posters or press photographs. Drawing near, one realizes that the large and visible 'pixels' are themselves smaller photographs, which magically assemble to compose the larger image. To step near, and away, and near again, to see dark and light photographs becoming the pupil or the highlight in somebody's eye, is to experience marvellous visual complexity. But there is also always a carefully calibrated relationship between the larger image and the smaller images that compose it, and this relationship provides an intellectual substance that endures even after the first visual surprise ebbs away. Usually chosen with caustic wit, the smaller images tend to subvert or at least complicate the larger image that they create, setting up a complex relay of meanings and their deconstruction." (Quddus Mirza, Adnan Manani, Kavita Singh et al., Rashid Rana, Mumbai: Chatterjee & Lal and Chemould Prescott Road, 2010, p. 25)

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