Rasheed Araeen
Sculpture No 1 (II)
1965 (reproduced 2014)
4 steel girders, metallic paint
30.5 x 30.5 x 183 cm each
In the 1960s, after studying civil engineering, Rasheed Araeen moved from Pakistan to London, where he developed a significant multimedia practice. His architectural forms are often fuelled by investigations into geometric abstraction—creating a form of perception that encourages the viewer to interrogate the very notion of embodiment. In Araeen’s imaginings, discarded industrial materials are assembled into spatialised ocular forms, as is evident in the four steel girders in blue emulsion, symmetrically constructing Sculpture No 1 (II) (1965). One of his signature minimalist sculptures, the work seeks to extend the narrative of geometrical sculpture created by his British counterparts such as Anthony Caro, Anthony Hill, Kenneth Martin and Mary Martin.