Amorphic Painting

Rashad Carre is a French artist who was born and grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia. After completing his studies in Europe, he returned to Jakarta where he was active in expanding his collection of sculptures and jewellery. He was also involved in advertising and film production, including the feature film, Victory, by Mark Peploe. Rashad also worked on interior design projects including an avant-garde restaurant, The Stage. He moved back to Europe where he lived in Paris for eight years, moving on to Brighton in the UK where he's now based. In Paris, a whole new expression started flowing out through his drawings. Like with his sculptures, the new drawings were not something planned. “I never approach my work with an intellectual concept in mind. The new forms I was drawing also had a different meaning or resonance for different people, so I decided not to look for titles and to sign the pieces in a way that questions which way up they can be hung, sometimes creating a new 'creature'.” Leaving the pieces untitled and unexplained asks the viewer to question how the form resonates to them personally. It was when Rashad moved to Brighton that he brought colour to the forms through acrylic painting on board. “It was only later that I came across documentaries of deep sea creatures, and was surprised how some of them resemble the forms I was producing. A biologist also told me that they looked a lot like what he sees seen under a microscope. I do believe that everything is interconnected, so who knows what I was revealing or searching for. The only criteria I gave myself was that the forms be amorphic, which I later gave as a title to the series, and let my creativity do the rest.” The journalist, Margaret Augusta wrote in The Jakarta Post, "....Rashad Carre leaves the people who view his works with the feeling that they are as much about the natural world as they are about the nature of man."