Paradise Row, London Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008
Exhibited
London, Saatchi Gallery, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, 29 January - 8 May 2010 London, Paradise Row, Shezad Dawood: If I Could Fall from Grace I with God, 23 November 2007-20 January 2008
Literature
The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, published by Jonathan Cape, 2009, p 60
Catalogue Essay
The neon works reject the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations, looking at a formal synthesis between East and West. Dawood’s works deliver a very complex set of notions that arise from symbols that are inherent to the two cultures that Dawood is familiar with. Dawood describes his attempt to formally represent notions of the divine as strongly as he represents something of the formlessness and abstraction at the heart of modern America. The disheveled tumble-weed balls that are anchored into each plinth exist as symbols of time. The sculptures also reference the history of the American West, acknowledging the rise of a new kind of social religion embedded in bold patriotism.