London-based artist Rana Begum has opened her first solo exhibition in New York at Lehmann Maupin, gathering 18 works drawn from different series across her career. The presentation centers on her use of humble industrial materials — glass, automotive parts, chain link and metal — to build visual situations where color and light behave in unstable, almost paradoxical ways. Begum describes her practice through three linked elements: light, form and color, which she says coexist in every piece, with the balance tipping from one series to the next. A work like “No. 1628” (2026) shows how the system works. Powder-coated aluminum bars, their sides painted a near-neon yellow and pink, are mounted to the wall at precise intervals. From head-on the palette seems restrained, but as the viewer moves, phantom hues and unexpected geometric patterns appear and dissolve — an effect produced by spacing and reflected light rather than by imagery. Time matters as much as geometry. Begum has said her works must be watched through the day, because small changes in daylight alter what they show; one piece installed near a window visibly responded to the sun shifting over the course of an hour. The aluminum-bar series, begun around 2007, remains the anchor of that investigation into how perception is staged by the eye and brain. Begum came to art as a way to communicate, and has said the pursuit became an obsession. The Lehmann Maupin show threads that long-running inquiry through a compact survey, giving New York audiences their first chance to encounter the artist’s career-length study of color as a physical, temporal event rather than a decorative one.