Mohammad Imran Qureshi

Acquired from Corvi-Mora, London, 2011

This painting is framed behind glass. It is in good condition, as viewed.
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Imran Qureshi was appointed Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year” in 2013 and was also commissioned to do an installation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, New York. Qureshi’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Queensland Art Galleries and Museums, Brisbane; Harris Museum, Preston; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka; and National Art Gallery, Islamabad. A leading Pakistani contemporary artist, Qureshi currently teaches miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Trained in the Mughal miniature tradition, his work is a unique synthesis of ancient techniques and contemporary socio-political narrative.

This intricate work is a fine example of Qureshi’s oeuvre. With beautifully rendered blue leaves and detailed painted stitches over a background of finely textured golf-leaf, the size and delicacy of this piece is immediately apparent. While on the surface it is an aesthetically pleasing painting, upon closer introspection, one realises that the small camouflage detail and those little red stiches are signifiers of war or even bloodshed. Pakistan has historically been the site of violent clashes between religious, ethnic and civil groups and the highlighting of this strife appears to be a dominant concern in Qureshi’s work. The gold-leaf which was prevalent in illuminated manuscripts and ancient miniature painting has taken on an even more significant presence in this work. The gold no longer serves as ornamental highlights but is now a prominent part of the painting. Gustav Klimt, the Austrian Symbolist painter was one of the first avant-garde artists to guild his canvasses with gold-leaf. Combining the arts and crafts tradition but rendering his pieces in an Art Nouveau style, Klimt succeeded in developing his own unique modernist form of expression. There are many parallels that can be drawn between Klimt and Qureshi’s practice but at the heart of it, both artists have done away with dimensionality and are using the principles of design, aesthetics and decoration as symbols to point towards a greater meaning. Part of the training that miniaturist painters undergo, is to create a grid as a structure for each work. Drawing the Hashiyas or boundaries, serve a system of coordinates with which to construct the picture and impose order. In Leakage, Qureshi has laid the gold-leaf in an orderly grid and then applied paint splatters and painted sections with careful deliberation, softening the rigidity and formal structure within the work. That in itself, is the crux of Qureshi’s practice. In a soft and organic way, he is questioning conflict and violence while imparting hope.