Lot 3: Rashid Rana

Three works: (i) Ommatidia I (Hrithik Roshan), 2004; (ii) Ommatidia II (Salman Khan), 2004; (iii) Ommatidia III (Shahrukh Khan)
These works are from an edition of 20

(i) 85 x 76 cm (33 1/2 x 30 in); (ii) 79 x 76 cm (31 1/8 x 30 in); (iii) 81 x 76 cm (31 7/8 x 30 in).

Colour coupler print, Diasec mounted.

2004

London, Wedel Fine Art, Face East: Contemporary Asian Portraiture, 13 December 2007 - 2 February 2008

Wedel Fine Art, London

Rashid Rana is a master at addressing political and social issues through ironic juxtaposition. His-mosaic like composite images appear to vacillate between micro and macro under the viewer's gaze, being made up of thousands of pixel - like miniaturized photos. Rana cleverly relates this tequnique back to the history of art in Pakistan, his native country.
A graduate of the national College of Arts, Lahore - the world's most respected traditional miniature painting program - Rana deviated from his peers by moving into digital media and photography and away from the tradional painting techniques taught at the school. Yet, in spite of his embrace of new media, Rana has wryly preserved the idea of the miniature in his use of tiny photographs.
In the present lot, the Ommatidia series, Rana depicts in his characteristic Pixellated format three current Bollywood stars: Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Hrithrik Roshan. These Kaleidoscopic portraits, each a mosaic of images of average men from the streets of Pakistan, comment on the construction of national and cultural identities, and question how meaning  is misconstrued in our media-oriented society. In each case, there is an ironic tension set up between the large and overall image of the Bollywood actor and the minute faces of ordinary Pakistanis from which it is assembled. While the latter may appear to gaze at their idols in adulation, Rana suggests that such huge celebrities are merely the invention of the viewing public - a public who investigate their own imaginations via the hyperreal lives of their heroes.