Speaking about his unique photomontages, Rashid Rana notes, “…at the core level my work is an attempt to record, using visual imagery, my time and the world in which I exist. In recent times, almost all my work comes from an interest in exploring images from the broad visual culture which surrounds us. If I look at my work in retrospect, the subject matter has been constantly changing, yet always mimics my formal interests. I would say that,...
Speaking about his unique photomontages, Rashid Rana notes, “…at the core level my work is an attempt to record, using visual imagery, my time and the world in which I exist. In recent times, almost all my work comes from an interest in exploring images from the broad visual culture which surrounds us. If I look at my work in retrospect, the subject matter has been constantly changing, yet always mimics my formal interests. I would say that, formally I have an infatuation with the 2D image and the many ways it can be understood. I find it really intriguing to look at the history of two-dimensional image making; be it painting, drawing or photography. Regardless of the nature of the image, abstract or representational, the very act of making a two-dimensional image is something that I think of as an abstract thing to do (simply because the two-dimensional image does not quite exist in nature in the same way as sculpture does)” (as quoted in Reem Fekri, “Rashid Rana Discusses his Artistic Practice”, Art Dubai Journal, March 2009).
Several of these Rana’s works negotiate issues that relate to Pakistan’s convoluted political history as well as the politics of its present. In the present lot, titled ‘Twins’ and executed in 2007, for example, Rana creates two monolithic towers out of several tiny images of Lahore streets, a grim reminder of how the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center’s twin towers intertwined the destiny of Pakistan and the United States forever.
Grappling with issues of tradition and modernity, and in particular with those of orthodoxy and dogma in rapidly evolving societies, Rana puts together a multitude of icon-sized images in his work to build a convincing, and frequently diametrically oppositional whole. “Each image is composed of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of smaller images that act like ‘pixels’ for the larger image they compose. Both kinds of images – large and small – are ‘found’ images appropriated by Rana who continues the fiction of his absence. Yet the prints are such complex assemblages, the discovery of the constituent parts such a breathtaking surprise, that a delight in the artist’s skill becomes an important part of the experience of looking at the work” (Kavita Singh, “Between The Part and The Whole”, Rashid Rana: Identical Views, Nature Morte, New Delhi, Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai, and Bose Pacia, New York, exhibition catalogue, 2004-05, p. 21).
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Lot
72
of
100
WINTER AUCTION 2009
9-10 DECEMBER 2009
Estimate
$40,000 - 60,000
Rs 18,40,000 - 27,60,000
Winning Bid
$46,000
Rs 21,16,000
(Inclusive of Buyer's Premium)
USD payment only.
Why?
ARTWORK DETAILS
Rashid Rana
Twins
2007
C Print + DIASEC
67 x 91 in (170.2 x 231.1 cm)
(Diptych)
Third from a limited edition of five
Category: Print Making
Style: Abstract
ARTWORK SIZE:
Height of Figure: 6'