Rana Begum – The Space Between
Parasol unit,
London 30 June – 18 Sept
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| Rana Begum in No. 670 L Mesh Installation, 2016 |
Anglo-Bangladeshi
artist Rana Begum became known a dozen years ago for fetish-finished wall-based
works in what one might term two and a half dimensions, that indeterminate
space between two dimensional painting and three dimensional sculpture. They’re legible from front-on but dynamised
by the viewer so that physical movement activates colour movement, evoking such
street features as railings, billboards, bridges and traffic while still
bearing the mark of her childhood in Bangladesh. The patterns of Islamic
architecture and the repetition of daily prayer feed in, as she has explained: ‘I
remember reading the Quran at a local mosque, in a tiny room dappled with
morning light. The light, the sound of the water fountain and the repetition of
recitation, all familiar elements, suddenly came together in a feeling of calm
and exhilaration’.
Begum’s
substantial retrospective across the whole of the Parasol unit includes two fine
examples of these parallel arrangements of powder-coated aluminium rods. You
might say they combine effects made famous by South Americans, and filter them
through Donald Judd: the changes in colour as you walk past due to differing
colours on either side of the rods recall Carlos Cruz-Diez’s ‘Physicromies’;
the efflorescence of an unseen colour reflecting onto a white surface was favoured
by Luis Tomasello. The conjunction generates a separately distinctive
phenomenology, and in No. 531, 2014, the
pink between rods transcends the geometry with an illusion which has everyone
checking to see that she really hasn’t painted the wall. No. 480, 2013, plays darkness and glitter into the equation to
quite different ends.
What’s
impressive in ‘The Space Between’ is how Begum has kicked on from that signature
approach to produce new, yet linked, streams of work. All play differently with
the ability of geometry, colour and light to generate change, somewhat
paradoxically, through repetition. The key to that is the movement of the
viewer in completing the work, which builds on how, as Begum says, ‘in life we
are in constant motion, seeing things shift and change around us. I feel the
need to reflect these transitions and changes within my work, and consequently
the viewer must play their part’. Begum’s
newer works tend to emphasise one of two aspects which are present in less
emphatic form in No. 480, 2013 and No. 531,
2014: first, the objecthood of the would-be-painting; second, the softening
of the expected rigidities of geometry.
No. 161, 2008. Paint on powder-
The rods take centre stage as objects
in No. 161, 2008, in which sixteen
are propped casually against the wall; and in No. 449, 2013, which joins them end-to-end form a zig-zag. No. 563 uses veneer to hint at
furniture, but an other-worldly glow of colour gives the game away. No. 207, 2010, emphasises objecthood
through contrasting lightness: in a predominantly metallic practice, substance
is stripped back to plastic drinking straws glowing in the dark by means of UV lighting,
some swaying in the air conditioning. No. 563, W Fold, 2014 uses
shapes which emerge from folding processes, and that’s Begum’s primary new form.
Aluminium sheets are
flattened against and creased away from the wall so that the varying areas and
shapes of the edges are folded out towards the viewer at assorted angles.
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| No. 394, L Fold, 2013 - Paint on mild steel |
The selection here, from 2013-2015, has black
or white centres with coloured wings. We seem to have moved indoors from the
street, with a resemblance to origami. These take the colour and light effects
from the parallel rods in quieter directions. The colour seems hidden from some
angles, fluorescent from others. There
can be marked variations in the glow made by the same colour, depending on its
positioning relative to the light sources and the angle of the fold on which
the colour sits. And there’s a meditative aspect to the folds which encourages
a different type of reflection. Deleuze posited the fold as the primary
constituent of a seamless reality. Thus ‘the outside is not a fixed limit but a
moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together
make up an inside: they are not something other than the outside, but precisely
the inside of the outside’. Without buying into a whole ontology, Begum’s folds
could be demonstrations of how the ‘inside’ space is topologically in contact
with the ‘outside’ space; and, given the streetlife origins of her rectilinear
work, it’s logical to read this as folding together the private and the public.
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| No. 624, M Drawing, 2015 - vinyl, powder-coated mild steel |
Two new streams of work speak a
language of softening and provisionality even though they use steel. Three large pieces on the canal-side terrace
outside Parasol unit (No. 626, L Drawing, 2015, No. 674, L Drawing, 2016, No. 675, L Drawing, 2016) and a related group of smaller wall
and floor based works all combine a monochrome coloured shape with a wire frame.
That jumps out like a cartoon animation of a shadow thrown by a well-angled
sun. Outside, the drawn frame is big enough to tremble marginally in wind;
indoors the smaller works are more rigid, but a sense of movement is still generated,
as different vantage points alter the relationship between originating form and
possible shadow. Begum has said that these, together with the originating No. 207, 2010, come out of ‘the need to
draw’, then nake the drawings ‘more present in the space’. Rather like the folds,
they are open forms which seem to welcome the viewer in to their effects.
No. 647 L Mesh, 2015. Paint on stainless steel. 213 x 136 x 2 cm/83 x 53½ x ¾. Courtesy of the artist. Photography by Jack Hems
Begum’s newest tack, and her most
radical softening of geometry, is the use of steel mesh designed for fencing.
While Begum – like Albers and Judd -
never mixes her colours physically, colour mixing does occur here by layering.
This simple effect generates a meditative presence in the three overlapping
diamonds of No. 647 L Mesh, 2015, yet when a whole room is
taken over by the multiple mesh colours of No. 670 L Mesh
Installation, 2016, the effect is far busier as
we glimpse people disappearing in networks of colour. This turn to the environment makes explicit the
potential of repetition to stand in for what might have proved an infinite
process. These mesh works are geometric, but with a softening which suggests contingency
and perhaps human uncertainty, even as it adopts the eternally unchangeable
nature of geometric shapes. In fact, all of Begum’s work has an additional contingency,
in that the decisions behind it are intuitive where they could – as one might at
first assume – be the result of applying a mathematical approach. That gentling
of form, then, sits well with an unconstrained method, and the mutability of colours in shifting light - and
put me in mind of James Turrell’s ungraspably immersive installations.
‘The Space
Between’ has proved very well visited. In part, that’s down to the ‘Kusama effect’
of people dropping in from the selfie-inspired queues for the Japanese’s
artist’s mirror rooms at neighbouring Victoria Miro. I’d be surprised if a high
proportion of those somewhat accidental visitors aren’t lured into Begum’s exhilaratingly
poised world.
