ART CITIES:Dubai-Rana Begun
Lodged between Op Art and Minimalism, Rana Begum’s works draw their inspiration from repetitive geometric patterns found within Islamic art and urban architecture. She takes her experience of the vibrant collage of the urban environment and concentrates it through a process of distillation and filtration. Her work, minimal in its formal language, imposes order and system by abstracting those moments of accidental, aesthetic wonder.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: The Third Line Gallery Archive
Comprised entirely of reflectors, Rana Begun’s latest body of work, that is on presentation in her solo exhibition “Perception and Reflection” at The Third Line Gallery, captures the unexpected geometries of urban environments while light continues to hold sway over the works’ formal aspects. The exhibition takes its cues from Rana’s 2006 British Council residency in Bangkok, where she first experimented with reflectors as a medium for creative expression. Interested in readymade materials for their ability to translate abstract ideas into tangible forms, Rana returned to reflectors a decade later with a 50-meter long work installed at Lewis Cubitt Square in London’s King’s Cross in 2016. Fast forward a couple of years and scale down a couple of feet, Rana’s new reflector works describe our ever-evolving built environment. Inspired by the straightforward patterns and vibrant colors of roadsigns and the way in which their surfaces shift as the day progresses, these works too shift and change as light exposure varies and as viewers walk around them. Complementing Rana’ wall-based pieces are towering structures that echo Dubai’s vibrant cityscape. Akin to our urban environments, Rana’s new body of work reveals a world of contrasts: the reflectors’ static nature yet perpetual movement; the preciousness of an artwork and the simplicity of quotidian materials; the clear delineation of each work yet the sense of infinity its constitutive elements and repetitive patterns conjure. Beyond such dichotomies, what Rana’s works succeed to orchestrate is the contemplative nature of urban chance encounters. Light, or more precisely, natural light, is perhaps Begum’s most precious material and also fundamental to the showing of her work. Although her works appear candy-like, with a faultless sheen, in photographs, Begum is weary of the transition from object to image, “I really don’t like images when people have to look at my photographs to understand the work. I find that really difficult because most of my work is about experiencing it and seeing it react with the light”. For something that can depend so much on circumstance, Begum is undeterred, because it is up to the materials she assembles onto the plane to carry the complex composition of light. She adds, “I look at the space, I look at the architecture and I look at the way that light enters it and how I can use this to my advantage. I think a lot of my work is not fighting with architecture, but instead, working with it”. As a self-proclaimed student of the minimalists, their trace is certainly visible in Begum’s work. Her primary occupations are with the assembly of light, form and the viewer’s field of vision, for which she cites Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd as formative influences.
Info: The Third Line Gallery, Alserkal Avenue, Warehouse H78 & H80, St. 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, Duration: 5/3-9/5/18, Days & Hours: Sat-Thu 10:00-19:00, www.thethirdline.com
