Imran Qureshi
“Artist of the Year” 2013 at Deutsche Bank KunstHalle
Imran Qureshi is Deutsche Bank’s “Artist of the Year” 2013. A focus on young art: like its corporate collection, Deutsche Bank’s award, the “Artist of the Year”, is committed to the present. The aim is to acquaint a wide public with new and exciting artistic positions. Based on a recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council, which includes internationally renowned curators Okwui Enwezor, Hou Hanru, Udo Kittelmann, and Victoria Noorthoorn, the bank honors an auspicious artist who addresses social issues in an individual way and has created an outstanding oeuvre that concentrates on the two focal points of the Deutsche Bank Collection: works on paper and photography. The selection was announced in Berlin, where Qureshi’s works will be shown in a major solo presentation at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in spring 2013.
Following the end of its 15-year collaboration with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle continues to develop the original format of the space together with various different cooperation partners to introduce new international positions that have not previously been offered a platform in Berlin. The Deutsche Bank Collection will be also be present in thematic exhibitions.
Following Wangechi Mutu in 2010, Yto Barrada in 2011, and Roman Ondák in 2012, the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council chose Imran Qureshi as one of the most important figures on Pakistan’s art scene today. Trained in miniature painting, the 1972-born artist works from the motifs, symbolism, and ornaments of the Moghul tradition that flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries in the north of the Indian subcontinent. Qureshi utilizes old Islamic forms of art and expands them to become a contemporary means of expression, combining traditional motifs and techniques with conceptual thought and contemporary abstract painting in unique ways. Qureshi includes his own observations on the reality of today’s Pakistan into his work—reflections on the relationship between the West and the Islamic world.
In Qureshi’s work, an investigation into ornamentation is both a reference to tradition and a vehicle for criticism: of constricting role models, violent political and religious systems, stereotypes, and conventions. He also transposes the form of miniature painting into site-specific installations in architectural space, addressing both the building itself and its historical and political connotations. His art delves into the constant alternation between violence and hope, destruction and creation, and calls for peaceful resistance and optimism in difficult times.
More information at db-artmag.com.
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