Raqib Shaw “Landscapes”

Pace Gallery (537 W 24th St.)

[Image: Shane Walsh "Untitled", 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 51h x 38w in.]

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Pace Gallery presents new paintings by Raqib Shaw. The exhibition showcases Shaw’s first work in the long tradition of landscape painting, signifying a new direction for the London-based Kashmiri artist. Drawing inspiration from his childhood memories of Kashmir and the nature and architecture of the Indian subcontinent, Shaw has mined and re-envisioned his own personal history through the compulsively-detailed, meticulously-painted, and emotionally-potent works.

This exhibition is the culmination of two decades of the artist’s continual refinement and experimentation with Hammerite enamel paint – a dedication that has allowed Shaw to push the material beyond its traditional capabilities. Shaw has approached this material and his practice with a mentality resonant with the Japanese mindset of Monozukuri. For the latest paintings, Shaw initially swirled the paint around with matchstick splinters and pieces of wood, then porcupine quills, and finally fine needles attached to quills for the most detailed areas of the compositions. The result is a paint surface that appears both fragile and highly textured, encompassing an extravagant color palette.

While grounded in the artist’s personal history in Kashmir, the new works also demonstrate Shaw’s careful study and appreciation of the tradition of Western landscape painting, including the work of masters Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Annibale Carraci, John Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, and Thomas Gainsborough. East meets West in Shaw’s final works fusing them with pictorial traditions of Persian and Mughal miniature paintings.

Autobiographical in nature, this exhibition presents Shaw’s experiences, observations, and memories of his life to the present date, with a particular focus on his early years spent in Kashmir before political unrest forced his family to relocate. Shaw referred to the series as: “A cathartic exercise to try to suture the wounds of separation from Kashmir.”

Although an artist of note, his work should be considered philosophically closer to that of Dubuffet and “outsider artists” than being integral to the concerns of contemporary figuration.

Raqib Shaw (b. 1974, Calcutta) is a Kashmiri artist who lives and works in London. He is known for his opulent and intricately detailed paintings of phantasmagorical dreamscapes made with surfaces inlaid with vibrantly colored jewels and enamel. His works reveal an eclectic combination of Western and Eastern influences, from Persian carpets and Northern Renaissance painting to industrial materials and Japanese lacquer. Although Shaw suggests specific references through images and titles, the worlds depicted in his work are distinctly born of his own imagination, sieving personal experiences through coded narratives.

Since 2005, Shaw has been the subject of monographic exhibitions at institutions in the United States and across Europe, including The Tate Britain (2006), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008) and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2018). His exhibition at The Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom (2017) was reimagined for the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh, in 2018. Shaw’s work is held in numerous public collections at institutions including the Amorepacific Museum of Art, Korea; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; and Tate, London, among others.