Art Review
The Great Mughals review – dazzling decorous delights waft you to paradise
V&A, London
Romance, bloodshed and religious curiosity is distilled in these lovely artefacts from the mighty military reign with a love of beauty and culture.
This exhibition wafts you to the paradise that Shah Jahan, fifth of the Muslim emperors of much of modern India and Pakistan, wanted to create on Earth. A floor-covering decorated with red poppies sets the scene for this idyll of calmness. A rippled stone panel with myriad water spouts had me dreaming of fruit trees and pavilions while I was cooled by a stone jali screen that once filtered air through one of his buildings. These lovely objects help to fill in for his masterpiece, which for obvious reasons can’t be here: the Taj Mahal.
Read More:https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/nov/06/the-great-mughals-review-va-london
With last week’s announcement of over £270 million in funding to boost the future sustainability of hundreds of arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage buildings across the nation – it is more pressing than ever that the sector lends its comments to the Arts Council England (ACE) review.
Join Asia Now, ArtReview and guests on 17 October at Monnaie de Paris
This Thursday 17 October in Paris, ArtReview is partnering with Asia Now – the art fair in Europe dedicated to showcasing artists from across Asia, presented by galleries from around the world, celebrating its 10th edition this year – for a series of discussions at Monnaie de Paris. How can we explore, unpack, and find liberation in the work and practice of Nikhil Chopra? Then: how can we understand – and rethink – the Asia/Southeast Asia art ecosystem, understood through the varying forms of its ‘institutions’? Join us to find out.
Read More: https://artreview.com/artreview-talks-at-asia-now-paris/
The ‘Mathematics of Composing Pretenses’, is a group show by four artists grappling with ‘nature’, as a word, or experience or a personal belonging. The gallery is housed in Phase 5, Defense Housing Authority (DHA), Lahore, a society where nature is anything but an epistemology. Instead, it is a tamed, decorative and an aesthetic art piece for a housing scheme to enjoy. This show is recommended for anyone who would be interested in stepping out of that pre-decided and controlled definition that plants offer us on the streets of DHA, to spend time with artists who use their art processes to rethink and reimagine.
The materials used in Ali Arshad’s work are of special importance and interest. One of the works uses a 20-gm stone of pyrite, which is a stone that comes from fire and is deceptively similar to gold. The artist seeks to show the failures of ‘rationalizing nature’. Deception and rationalization, two both aspects that are politically relevant to every Pakistani citizen. One can spend much time with Arshad’s work, and even ponder upon it pedagogically. For example, Arshad presents a lettered plan by 2 hypothetical men (Sultan and Sukhawant), who seek to separate humanity from nature and inevitably fail. Viewers who are fans of philosophy and postmodernism, can spend a lot of time with Arshad’s work to conceptualize pieces of work that seem to illustrate an academic essay. My personal favorite was an engraved marble slab, labeled ‘What is a Quatrain?’ In a talk that Ayaz Jokhio (another artist in the show) gave to ArtDivvy in August 2023. Jokhio stated that “when he paints, he doesn’t care what art is, and when he makes art, he doesn’t care what painting is”. The artist, who is also part of the show, illustrates a point that Arshad’s marble slab has illustrated. The work is not led by medium or even the restriction of ‘art’. Arshad’s marble slab is an excellent illustration of a young artist almost figuring out a mathematical problem, a problem of what a Persian tradition is in poetry, through a piece that illustrates how contemporary South Asian artists create a relationship to mathematics and traditional art.
Read more: https://www.youlinmagazine.com/article/art-review-the-mathematics-of-composing-pretenses/MjczNw==
