A Vision of Decadence and Darkness

Raqib Shaw’s paintings shimmer like stained glass, their surfaces so lavish, so drenched in enamel, gold, and glitter that they could make a Baroque cathedral blush. Yet, beneath the crystalline sheen, a sinister ballet unfolds—mythological beasts with gaping maws, hybrid creatures caught in acts of lust and carnage, landscapes dripping with both beauty and menace. His work is a paradox: decadent yet violent, dazzling yet grotesque. It is as if Hieronymus Bosch, Gustav Klimt, and a Kashmiri miniaturist conspired to dream a world so intricate, it teeters on the edge of delirium.

The Making of a Visionary: From Kashmir to London

Born in Calcutta in 1974 but raised in Kashmir, Shaw’s childhood was steeped in the grandeur of carpets, antiques, and jewelry—art forms his family traded as merchants. But Kashmir, with its breathtaking beauty, was also a place of political upheaval. When conflict escalated, his family relocated to New Delhi, and later, Shaw found himself in London, where a visit to the National Gallery sealed his fate: he would become an artist.

London’s Central Saint Martins became his laboratory. There, he struggled with traditional painting but soon developed a singular technique—one part alchemy, one part obsessive craftsmanship. Using industrial paints, porcupine quills, and stained-glass liner, he built mesmerizing tableaux, each surface encrusted with a near-maniacal attention to detail. His use of oil paints, though unconventional in combination with industrial materials, adds depth and richness to his layered compositions, reinforcing the tension between tradition and reinvention.

Art as a Labyrinth of Meaning

Shaw’s works, at first glance, appear to be hedonistic fever dreams. Yet, look closer: beneath the shimmering enamel, they bristle with satire, history, and deeply personal reflections. He has called them “a commentary on my own experience of living in this society, and of being alive.”

A Collision of East and West

His compositions weave together the precision of Persian miniatures, the grandeur of Renaissance masters, and the excess of Mughal palaces. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s sprawling allegories meet the jewel-like surfaces of Indian decorative arts. Thomas Gainsborough’s landscapes fuse with visions of Srinagar, where the artist spent his formative years before exile. His mastery of oil paints allows him to achieve an unparalleled luminosity, mimicking the glow of precious metals and gemstones in his intricate surfaces.

Theatrical Violence & Eroticism

There is a calculated eroticism in his work—orgiastic revelries that recall both the divine ecstasy of Hindu temple carvings and the morbid excesses of Francis Bacon. But there is also the specter of destruction: burning cities, fallen angels, grotesque transformations. His art is a visual novel where opulence and apocalypse go hand in hand. The presence of classical motifs intertwined with contemporary themes further cements Shaw’s unique ability to bridge historical grandeur with modern anxieties.

The Personal as the Mythological

Shaw’s most recent exhibition, Space Between Dreams at Pace Gallery, blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream and Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, these new works reflect on memory, longing, and the ghosts of places lost. Venice, New York, and his own London garden collide in cinematic, hallucinatory landscapes, while the deliberate use of oil paints adds texture and dimension, enriching the dreamlike quality of his storytelling.

Few artists today craft worlds as hypnotic, as fiercely independent, as Shaw. His paintings are portals—gateways into realms where desire and destruction dance in gilded cages. As his works continue to tour major museums, from the Frist Art Museum to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, one thing is clear: Raqib Shaw’s vision is not just a spectacle—it is an invitation to step into the labyrinth of his imagination and never look back. His use of oil paints, combined with his signature industrial techniques, ensures that his works remain as timeless as they are revolutionary.