reviews

  • Raqib Shaw, After George Stubbs “Cheetah and Stag with Two Indians”, 2013, oil on canvas, 72 x 108 3/8".

    Raqib Shaw, After George Stubbs “Cheetah and Stag with Two Indians”, 2013, oil on canvas, 72 x 108 3/8".

    Raqib Shaw

    Manchester Art Gallery

    “So quick bright things come to confusion,” says Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The perplexed lover’s comment came to mind at the recent show of thirty-eight (old and new) paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Calcutta-born, London-based Raqib Shaw—the artist’s largest exhibition to date. Here, shimmering surfaces often concealed sinister truths. At first, the rhinestone-studded painting Blue Moonbeam Gatherer, 2010, might suggest romance. Enfolded in a velvety indigo night, fir trees caked in sugar-white frost glimmer like diamonds; silvery deer prance under glittery stars.

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