ARTIST Raqib Shaw looked on at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art yesterday ahead of the country’s first ever exhibition of his work.
The Edinburgh show includes eight lavish images by the Calcutta-born painter, including a brand new piece never exhibited anywhere before. The show, titled Reinventing the Old Masters, includes Shaw’s reinterpretations of influential works.
It also features two paintings normally displayed at the National Galleries of Scotland, both of which have been reimagined by the South Asian artist.
They are The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, completed in 1849 by Joseph Paton, and An Allegory of Melancholy by 16th century German luminary Lucas Cranach.
Shaw’s new take on the former was completed two years ago and shows a kimono-clad character puffing an opium pipe in a “surreal, hallucinogenic world” featuring fairies like those depicted by Paton.
The latter substitutes his own image for the woman pictured by Cranach and a Kashmiri landscape in place of the original’s Saxon hills.
Meanwhile, the infants depicted by Cranach are displaced by a bubble showing a room in Shaw’s home which was recently damaged by fire.
The work was completed just a few weeks ago and the changes, according to gallery bosses, make for “a very personal Allegory of Melancholia of his own”.
Shaw, who was raised in Kashmir, has previously exhibited at the Tate Britain in London and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Yesterday he gave a lecture to Scots art fans about his work, but time constraints caused by a delayed flight left him unable to speak with journalists.
But, gallery chiefs called his output “elaborate, magical and breath-taking”.
Praising the work of the London-based artist, Simon Groom, director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “We are thrilled to be showing Raqib Shaw’s work in Scotland for the first time. The size, complexity, technical accomplishment and audacity of his work are something to behold – some of the pictures have, not surprisingly, taken years to paint. They are absolute visions of delight and awe, and I defy anyone not to lose themselves in the works.”
These works take months to complete, beginning with preparatory studies before being transferred onto wooden panels with an acrylic liner which leaves a faint line. Shaw paints between the lines using syringes and a porcupine quill to manipulate the colour, which comes from a mixture of household gloss-based paints and metal cover Hammerite, sometimes adding rhinestones and gems.
The style is said to have been shaped by Shaw’s exposure to his family’s luxury goods business, which dealt in jewellery, textiles, carpets and antiques.
It was further honed during training at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London.
The Edinburgh show, which is free to attend, opens today and will run until October 28.
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