Rashid Rana

Rashid Rana, Chatterjee and Lal, Chemould Prescott Road, Pragati Offset Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad, 2010, p.190 illus.

This artwork is framed behind glass and is in good condition, as viewed.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

At first glance, Red Carpet appears to be an exact description of its title, a deep crimson Persian rug, but upon closer inspection one realizes that the photos, incorporated as a grid, are details of images taken in abattoirs. When one contemplates the juxtaposition of a luxurious, impeccable and expensive rug with the violent and bloody images that create it, a deeper understanding of the artist’s practice is established. 'The everyday carpet viewed from afar becomes the bloody abattoir scenes up close. It's both illusion and reality, abhorrent and beautiful, the graphic micro images are provocative yet the slaughter of animals for human consumption is an everyday occurrence.' (Alnoor Mitha "Everything is Happening at Once", Rashid Rana - Everything is Happening at Once, Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester, 2011, p.7).

‘The opposition between beauty and death integral to Rana’s Red Carpet series has been explored by generations of artists, and sometimes overturned. The Symbolists, at their most decadent, replaced truth with death in [John] Keats’ paradigm, asserting that beauty was death, and death, beauty. In our own time, we have grown familiar with that dazzling marker of our last end, Damien Hirst’s diamond skull, produced in the same year as the first Red Carpet. Rana’s take on the theme accords with his practice of first engaging viewers with iconic, picturesque or monumental images and then revealing these easily recognised and digested views to be constituted of mundane, gruesome or explicitly sexual details. He sets up contrasts that sometimes appear simplistic, but possess an undercurrent of signification, one usually related to the conditions and confusions of the subcontinent, that destabilises categories which seem mutually exclusive.

The photomosaic and the carpet share the property of elaborateness, though one is crafted with the help of high-end software and the other through a painstaking technique barely changed for millennia. Our curiosity about the manner of the print’s manufacture leads us to consider the same for the carpet it depicts. This brings to mind the fact that carpet weavers and butchers aren’t that far apart: they ply traditional trades and mostly struggle to make ends meet. Such interplay between the big picture, its components, and the nature of their creation, breaks down an initially perceived stark opposition into a complex pattern of relationships.’ (Girish Shahane, Conversations: Rashid Rana, 2010, accessed from http://shahanegirish.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/rashid-rana-2010.html on 20th January 2013)