Reflections Upon the Looking-Glass River,now on view at our Geneva gallery and in a complementary presentation online, brings together a suite of recent paintings made by Raqib Shaw while in lockdown. Presented in dialogue with one another, these intricate works speak to the most pressing themes of contemporary life: beauty, kindness, cruelty, loneliness, contentment, loss.
Borrowing its title from the 1885 poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, Raqib Shaw: Reflections Upon the Looking-Glass River pays homage to the imposed ‘slowness’ of the last 18 months. Shaw’s contemplative paintings, much like Stevenson’s poem, call attention to the quiet moments of life and the knowledge that all disturbances eventually calm.
