Raw Is the Red by Shahryar Nashat transforms the roof terrace of the Aspen Art Museum into a sculptural confrontation framed by the commanding presence of Aspen Mountain. At its center stands a vitrine encasing a “meat object,” an image of raw flesh on powder-coated steel, covered in a translucent layer of acrylic gel. Behind it rises a pink marble obelisk whose scale is that of the artist’s own height. Together, they evoke the body as both physical presence and mental projection, as a carrier of both empathy and distance.
This is the second presentation of Raw Is the Red, which was first shown on the Bluhm Family Terrace at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022. In Chicago, the work appeared against a skyline of glass and steel; in Aspen, it meets snowy inclines and winter skies. This contrast between urban architecture and mountain landscape turns the sculptures into stand-ins for human bodies poised against powerful natural forces.
Tones of reds and pinks punctuate the muted winter palette, while mirrored panels fold the environment back into the installation. Raw Is the Red becomes both display and dissection — an image of vulnerability and endurance rendered in sculptural form.
Shahryar Nashat: Raw Is the Red was curated by Jordan Carter, curator at Dia Art Foundation and Susanne Ghez, adjunct curator in Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is organized at Aspen Art Museum by Stella Bottai, Senior Curator at Large and Daniel Merritt, Chief Curator, with Gemma Goette, Curatorial Assistant
Press release from Aspen Art Museum
Image: Shahryar Nashat. Raw Is the Red. Installation view form Shahryar Nashat: Raw Is the Red, 2025. Photography by by Dan Bradica. Image courtesy of Sylvia Kouvali, Piraeus / London; Gladstone Gallery, New York / Brussels; David Kordansky, Los Angeles / New York
