RAQIB SHAW | UNTITLED

Acquired from Deitch Projects, New York

Acquired from the above

The current lot by Calcutta-born and London-based contemporary artist Raqib Shaw boldly illustrates hallmarks of his extraordinary artistic practice. Meticulously rendered and macabre in its subject, the work at once allures and repels the viewer, and was a study for Reflections I (2006). Reflections I was shown in ‘Art Now: Raqib Shaw’ at Tate Britain in 2006 and reveals the same bound and bloodied figures of the present work, surrounded by fantastical creatures. (https://raqibshawstudio.com/artworks/reflections-i/)

In conversation about his Tate show, Shaw elaborates on the Reflections series, in particular the inspiration behind the figures seen in the present lot. “I always was fascinated, from a very young age in Kashmir, when I read the Odes To Truth, that ‘If you seek to find yourself, look not in the mirror, for there is but a shadow there, a stranger’. So, the Reflections, in a way, work like me looking at myself, and acknowledging my paranoias, my fears, and everything else, and that’s why you see bonded bodies looking at each other and trying to sort things out.” (Raqib Shaw, Art Now: Raqib Shaw, 2006 https://raqibshawstudio.com/exhibitions/art-now-raqib-shaw/)