Shezad Dawood at Paradise Row

In his first major London show, "If I Should Fall from Grace with God," Shezad Dawood does not make didactic statements for, against or even about the war in Iraq. But the half-Indian, half-Pakistani, London-based artist's show of paintings and sculptures stands out as one of the most sobering meditations about clashing cultures to have emerged from London's politically engaged art scene. While Dawood employs religious references, he does not pit one faith against another or position Eastern religion in opposition to Western secularism. Instead, he juxtaposes two deeply ingrained sets of beliefs, one instilled by Islam and the other by cinematic myths of the American West.

A series of paintings of various sizes (all work 2007), set in vintage wooden frames, were hung seemingly at random on the gallery's black walls and lit from below like decorations in a darkened saloon. They depict snarling soldiers, severed heads, old cowboys and woodland game, most of the images inspired by films in the cowboy genre (Dawood is a John Ford aficionado). In earlier paintings Dawood aspired to photorealism, but these, all featuring black backgrounds, are composed of intense, choppy brushstrokes and loose, thick lines whose feral quality helps convey the wildness of the West and the machismo of the cowboy persona. In contrast, four vitrines situated in the center of the gallery housed messy tangles of tumbleweed, through the branches of which Dawood wove colored neon Arabic letters that lit up the otherwise dark room. The graceful calligraphy, which relates to Islam's 99 Names of God, served as a counterpoint to the paintings of the West.

In the exhibition's press release, Dawood is described as seeking "a point of reconciliation between two seemingly diametrically opposed and yet, at present, fatally interwoven, cultural traditions." While he did not accomplish this ambitious aim, he illuminated an important point that is often overlooked in depictions of the toxic tensions between East and West. In his view, the Iraq war is not a contest between modernity and its antecedents, or between a culture fixated on static abstract symbols and a slick, worldly society obsessed with the future at the cost of traditional values. Instead, he portrays a battle between two cultures' unyielding devotion to anachronistic systems of self-representation. America has a global reputation for being a fast culture with an adolescent disregard for its heritage. Yet the rugged resilience associated with its West still compels popular admiration. Rhinestones and riches, and new technology, have altered the reality of today's cowboys. But as Dawood demonstrates in "If I Should Fall from Grace with God," the myth of a lone, morally driven hero still resonates within American culture and represents it abroad, offering a telling comparison with certain aspects of Islam.

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