Rashid Rana - Everything is Happening at Once

Rashid Rana - A Plinth From a Gallery in Lahore (2010-11)

Rashid Rana, whose new exhibition Everything Is Happening At Once opened at the New Art Exchange, is Pakistan's leading exponent of multimedia art and specialises in mosaics, using smaller, related pictures to form a larger image. A 'walk and talk' with the artist himself and a question and answer session demonstrated both the varied reactions his work draws from - some very hot, if not a little outspoken themes.

The New Art Exchange's lower floor has been opened up as widely as possible to make way for Rana's expansive work and the stark white walls and ceiling give as much stage room as possible. Rana , as he describes himself, works with the tension between macro and micro, diametric opposites and their contextual links. For example Desperately Seeking Paradise II (2010), shows a grouping of small shots of third-world habitations and environments that make up a night shot of the Manhattan skyline set as the new Rome,  a centre of “development”, square-shaped and looming up and out, an indoor skyscraper.

There are a series of pixellated box images, of a typical Western selection of books and newspapers, in A Plinth From a Gallery in Lahore (2010-11) – it’s censored but recognisable, although how it took two years to bring to fruition is a question for someone else. In his explanation Rana gives the typical artistic answers about avoiding clichés, whilst dressed in all-black, sporting a small goatee beard and sipping mineral water.
Certain phrases strike a chord however, particularly his exegesis of Dislocation I (2007), a variation on the theme of time-delayed pictures showing a Pakistani shop front forming the same image in negative totality - a photographic motion picture with a final scene reached through a miniature plot line held inside. Rana speaks of the 20th century as one defined by film, and injects as much of that into his works as possible.

Rashid Rana -
Desperately Seeking Paradise II (2010) Installation
view at Lisson Gallery, London, Courtesy of the 
Tiroche DeLeon Collectionn & Art Vantage Ltd

Also featured downstairs are The World is not Enough (2006-2007), a large-scale photograph of a landfill site and Language Series II (2010-2011), an abstract ocean of colour made from different advertising signs and hoardings.

Darker, more engaging material is reserved in the gallery’s third floor space, first a series of red and white square constructs made up of pictures of flesh and skin titled What Lies Between Flesh & Blood (2009) and are powerful in their geometric immediacy.

But the two real artistic jewels are kept in secret hidden in a small room adjacent to this - Veil VI (2007) and Red Carpet I (2007), the first an image of Islamic women adorned in veils, caught in mass protest are made up from American hardcore pornography. The second, a beautiful Persian tapestry carpet fashioned from animal slaughter images. For an artist who pleads innocence when it comes to clichés, it's hard to escape the taboo perspectives expressed in both of these pieces, but it's also impossible to deny the power and simple beauty of them either.

During the Question and Answer session a young Muslim woman attacked Rana’s motivation behind the provocative nature of these two pieces, in particular Veil VI. When brought face to face with Rana’s work one cannot deny the stark, shocking and controversial insightful his art provokes. Everything Is Happening At Once fits perfectly with the New Art Exchange's mandate to provide both minority and modernity. Not provocative for its own sake it, his arguably incendiary style, incites debate and draws the viewer in both intellectually and physically.

Rashid Rana - Everything is Happening at Once runs at the New Arts Exchange until 31 March 2012

All images provided for this review including thumbnail/centre (Rashid Rana - A Plinth From A Gallery in Lahore, 2010-11) and home page (Rashid Rana - Language Series 2, 2010-11) are courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery. Exhibition Partners - Cornerhouse, Lisson Gallery and Asia Triennial Manchester 11. 

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