Critics were torn on Cady Noland’s show at Gagosian in New York at the end of last year. It was loaded with her typical touchstones of political figures from 20th-century history but also plenty of signage and tires that gave one the feeling of being in a garage that is far too neat. It all suggested not only that America has lost its mind—her usual thesis—but has also lost its way.
Another artist doing good work with similar materials is Rana Begum (b. 1977), whose first institutional show in the United States recently travelled from SCAD in Savannah to the Gallery at Windsor in Florida. “Reflection” is one of those great exhibition titles that makes you consider every work in it from a different angle, in case it’s literal. Much of the work tends to be symmetrical in compelling ways or made from the kind of roadwork material, e.g. reflector panels, that reward the viewer who walks around them, ideally with a head cocked in contemplation.
For this reason, I’m grateful that the Gallery at Windsor flew me down to see it in person, which isn’t the case for most exhibitions featured in this column. No. 1272 Chainlink (2023) would be hard to experience virtually. The powder-coated chainlink stacks on top of each other in a hallucinatory way, creating a fearsome grid of diamonds that keeps changing as it causes the gaps and colors to intersect.
All the work in the show was made in the last 10 years and feels like a highly contemporary response to the minimalism of the 1970s. Outside the Gallery at Windsor stands the tower No. 1261 T Reflector (2023), which is like if Anne Truitt used the flashy squares from the back of bicycles instead of paint. In Windsor, these catch the sun during the day and the stray headlights of the golf carts that people use to get around at night. Like the rest of Begum’s work, it elbows its way into your attention while maintaining a self-satisfied dignity not native to Florida.
Begum’s post-minimalism trades the cold certainty of those earlier practitioners for a more delicate and provisional version that is more representative of our time. The show opens with No. 744 L Fold (2017), a red-magenta wall piece that is one of the few non-symmetrical works in the show. Looking at an image of it now, I can’t be sure that it isn’t symmetrical, which is probably how Begum wants it. She’s described it as having a “softness” and a “glow” about it, which is both accurate and crazy to say about a work of stainless steel. It seems like a sheet of origami paper that someone has only begun to work on and abandoned. Or maybe they decided that four folds are sufficient.
“Rana Begum: Reflection” is on view at the Gallery at Windsor through May 8, 2026.
More exhibition reviews
- Davide Balliano’s Geometric Abstraction Sits at the Threshold of Precision and Entropy
- At Swivel Gallery, Amy Bravo Confronts Intergenerational Trauma, Identity and the Power of the Collective
- Painter Helene Schjerfbeck’s Life in Layers at the Met
- Don’t Miss Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys at the VMFA
- In Chicago, Yoonshin Park Explores the Boundaries of the Book
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