01/04/17
Interview: Saad Qureshi
Saad Qureshi: time | memory | landscape
Gazelli Art House, London
3 March – 16 April 2017
For his third solo show with
Gazelli Art House, Saad Qureshi is stepping out from the shadows and showing
two series of drawings – one made with charcoal and brick dust, the other with
scorched lines on paper – which, although very physical and sculptural in their
own way, move away from his usual medium of sculpture. “I think it was really
brave of me to go ahead and do a solo show,” Qureshi says. “There’s no room for
error, there’s nothing to hide behind.” He only recently rediscovered his love
for charcoal – a medium he had set aside since the days of compulsory life
drawing – and was seduced by the sound it made, as he rubbed it on plywood in
his studio. “That was it: there was no looking back.”
Qureshi’s monumental landscapes –
or “mindscapes”, as he prefers to call them – are hybrids of several
geographical places compressed into one, often fantastical and geographically
impossible. He never does any physical planning, conceiving of his imagery only
in his mind’s eye, before mapping it out impulsively, using Indian ink and a
towel, on top of his prepared plywood surface, coated in a paint he mixes out
of brick dust. On top of this, he then “goes crazy” with the charcoal. The
result is at once photographic and alien. Known, but uncanny. Qureshi explores
how time and memory play tricks on the mind.
His exhibition at Gazelli Art House
coincides with the launch of his first major public commission, Places For
Nova, in Victoria, London, which was where he first began working with brick
dust.
Qureshi shared his enthusiasm for
time, memory, landscape and drawing with Studio International.
Watch this film here