ART DUBAI 2017

The Third Line is participating in the 11th edition of Art Dubai with a solo presentation by Rana Begum. The retrospective display will showcase Rana’s minimalist practice focusing on light and colour, and its development throughout the years. We are proud to announce that Rana is this year’s winner of The Abraaj Group Art Prize and her commission will be revealed during Art Dubai.

Through a language of Minimalist abstraction, Rana blurs the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture. The spatial pieces require visual engagement and reflection on the concept of physical presence. For her recent work, Rana draws inspiration from a combination of urban visual stimuli such as the abstract clashes of form and colour that can be seen in the city and the traditional repetition of geometric patterns found in Islamic art.

Rana’s use of fundamental forms such as the square, circle and triangle act as the starting point to achieve a more complex order. She continuously investigates materials and shapes, enabling her to produce a visual experience; the sculptural objects are given life and are activated by interactions with light. Tone and colour allow for freedom and an intuitive response in the process of making. The colour palette is arbitrary and there is no narrative, only experience; Rana cleverly uses the viewer’s connotation with colours for the works to exude calmness and ecstasy at the same time.

The result is a series of tightly controlled compositions where the viewer is required to adjust their position, to make the work unravel. By coercing interaction Rana orchestrates a situation where by moving around the works, the viewer witnesses the chaos of shapes aligning themselves into fleeting moments of symmetry.