Rafique Shah comes from the same Madhya Pradesh soil as S.H. Raza. His visual language, however, is very much his own, and it is rooted in lived experience. Born into a family of Sufi faqirs in the village of Satwas, Shah spent part of his childhood accompanying his grandmother in a life of wandering, asking for food. His father later made an education possible, and with it a training in Fine Arts at the Indore School of Art. Those early years never appear literally on the canvas. Instead, as Shah puts it, they remain "an emotional and perceptual ground" from which he considers movement, belonging, absence, resilience and transformation.
Central to his work is the grid, though never, in his words, "as a rigid system." It shifts, opens and overlaps, allowing "spaces of uncertainty to remain visible." His planes of colour behave like sheets of tinted glass laid one upon another, each altering the hue of what lies beneath. Through them the fields and countryside of Madhya Pradesh are abstracted into light and colour, while the grid itself recalls the view from above of cities, towns and villages. This is what sets Shah apart from Mondrian, with whom his geometry is often compared. Where Mondrian sought a pure and universal order, Shah's concern is light, and nature's play of light upon the world (or memory of the world) around him. Rectangles, lines and fragments form provisional structures that might be read as a landscape, a map, a memory or an interior, without ever settling into any one of these. His most recent canvases turn to a quieter palette and give greater attention to the spaces between forms. As Shah himself says, "The painting does not describe a memory; it allows memory to remain present as a way of seeing."
