I DE V / l’étrangère is delighted to announce A Handful of Paradise, a solo presentation of sculptures and paper tapestries by award-winning British artist, Saad Qureshi. The exhibition will also mark the launch of I DE V / l’étrangère, an agency with a viewing room established by curators Isabel de Vasconcellos (I DE V) and Joanna Gemes (l’étrangère).
Described by the Observer’s Laura Cumming as “one of our most pensive and poetic artists”, Qureshi has established an international reputation for his beautiful and lyrical work which spans painting, works on paper and sculpture. Often exploring spiritual and dreamlike themes, Qureshi’s work gives form to the ideas or stories by which we lend meaning to human existence.
A Handful of Paradise is Qureshi’s first commercial exhibition in London since 2017. It includes a new body of work made for I DE V / l’étrangère, developing themes from his Something About Paradise exhibition, conceived for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2020) and recently shown at Djanogly Art Gallery (2024).
Exploring the idea of what paradise means in a contemporary context, the works have their origin in Qureshi’s fascination with how broad and various interpretations of paradise are. In 2019, the artist travelled around the country asking people of all faiths and none what the word conjured up for them. Drawing these imagined spaces together, he created three large mindscapes evoking a collective topography spanning the globe and beyond: urban and rural, heavenly bodies and personal as well as spiritual utopias.
Returning to this reservoir of remembered and imagined places, A Handful of Paradise is a new body of sculpture reflecting on how we conserve and protect our most precious memories and belongings. It takes the form of domestic drawers reclaimed from house clearances, second hand shops and friends. Within each drawer, the artist is collecting a clutch of fragments of paradise. Rendered in greys and whites, these small mindscapes have the quality of memories or daydreams, at one remove from the space they share with their viewers.
These drawers, sundered from their original containers and already freighted with a history of past homes and moments, are placed on legs and wheels, to aid them in their onward journey. The sculptures meditate on the poetic notion of home and paradise not as a physical place, but a state of mind that you arrive at: what the artist describes as “a form of mental destination. My vision of paradise, is that it is somewhere that keeps evolving and transforming as we move through life.”
The exhibition will also be the first London presentation of Qureshi’s Tanabana paper tapestries, which have been widely shown in the USA, India and the Middle East. The Tanabana series is rooted in Qureshi’s experience growing up in a family where the art of making by hand was an important shared experience and textiles were particularly prized and valued. Originally working from the collection of textiles he grew up with, the Tanabanas have expanded to take in carpets and textiles both decorative and practical, and more recently to include elements from sacred architecture, such as arches and stained glass-windows.
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