Rasheed Araeen. Auth Rangelay Yaar (Eight Colourful Friends)

About

Auth Rangelay Yaar (Eight Colourful Friends), 2018, extends and develops Araeen's on-going series of works that centre around an open cubic form. Echoing the proportions of the 3x3x3 metre gallery space of Matt's Gallery Bermondsey Araeen's 8 variously coloured skeletal geometric forms occupy and almost fill the gallery, allowing only minimal movement around them. 

A canonical work of minimalist modernism, the artist has been working with these forms since the 1960s. Throughout the decades they have been rearranged and utilised in a variety of ways. The mutability of these painted wooden forms is central to there functioning within Araeen's oeuvre - his complex and multi-layered practice has seen them variously transformed to discursive, aesthetic and functional ends. The sculpture is informed by Araeen's training as an engineer - the diagonal line that bisects each face of the open cube adds the most possible strength to the form whilst retaining its openness. 

Auth Rangelay Yaar (Eight Colourful Friends) echoes earlier works such as Zero to Infinity (1968/2007, Tate Collection) in which the open forms can be interacted with and moved by viewers. This reordering of works, engaging viewers in participatory modes, disrupts the finitude and absolutism of European modernism. The final arrangement of the elements that make up this work is left open-ended by the artist.

Rasheed Araeen is represented by Grosvenor Gallery.