Lot 382: RASHID RANA (B. 1968)

RASHID RANA (B. 1968)
Red Carpet III
chromogenic print and Diasec mounted
52 3/8 x 72 in. (133 x 183 cm.)
executed in 2007; number one from an edition of five plus one artist proof

Conceptual duality along with the 'double take' it engenders is a key feature of Rashid Rana's digitized vocabulary. Playing with notions of Gestalt Rana's images reveal multiple world views both formally and conceptually, in turn serving as a comment on contemporary geopolitics. The Red Carpet series initiates a post-modern discourse via a stunning and calculated method of execution. It takes the archetypal and cultural symbolism of the woven carpet and inverts this historicism by appropriating gory, actual photo-images in absolute truth to reality. Comprising thousands of tiny images, 'pixels', depicting the slaughter of goats as prescribed by halal law, Red Carpet - III is paradoxically an object of gruesome beauty rooted in centuries of tradition by imitating the pixilated architecture of an actual carpet. As the viewer moves closer to the highly polished surface the geometric pattern breaks down into its constituent parts. Rana's attention to such minutiae refers also to the historical traditions of miniature painting from South Asia.

A retrospective of the artist's work was recently held in Paris at the Musée Guimet in July 2010.