Language Series 3

Rashid Rana is one of Pakistan's preeminent contemporary artists. He works across a range of media but is best known for his distinctive photographic works, large mosaics constructed from hundreds of smaller images. Rana believes that working in two dimensions allows him to stake my right to work with fictional spaces, impossible spaces, with the machinery of truth rather than with truth itself. His work is influenced by Zahoor ul Akhlaq, the Indian-born modernist painter who moved to Pakistan following the 1947 partition, whose works combined abstraction with traditional art. Each of the works in Rana's 'Language Series' references a significant work of western art, reflecting on western art history while the individual photographs in the mosaic capture views of the Lahore cityscape. In Language Series 3 Rana references Claude Monet's Church at Vetheuil (1880), which was bought for Southampton City Art Gallery with help from the Art Fund in 1975, recreating the mottled blues and greens of the original landscape through photographs of signage taken around the city.