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Introduction
Victoria Miro is delighted to participate in the inaugural Art Basel Qatar with a presentation of new works by Idris Khan.
Drawing inspiration from sources including the history of art and music as well as key philosophical and theological texts, Idris Khan is widely acclaimed for works that investigate memory, creativity and the layering of experience. Comprising a series of panels painted in jewel-like hues embellished with gold leaf, this presentation continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of colour, repetition and the spiritual potential of abstraction, with particular reference to the rich traditions of Islamic culture. Through many years of study, Khan has developed his exploration of colour to evoke both emotional immediacy and contemplative stillness by building layers of pigment. The colour acts as a psychological and spatial field – expansive, immersive and affecting.
In these new works, each panel is carefully inscribed with layers of musical notation or Arabic text, applied by hand using gold leaf. These inscriptions, often poetic or meditative, are overlaid repeatedly until only their edges remain legible. In this process, language folds in on itself and meaning dissolves into form. The use of gold leaf carries particular historical and symbolic significance, directly referencing the Blue Qur’an, a medieval Islamic manuscript renowned for its indigo-dyed parchment and gold Kufic script. Khan draws on this tradition not only in terms of materials and colour palette but also its deeper metaphysical implications, where sacred geometry, colour and language converge in devotional art.
As in earlier works, these new panels reflect Khan’s interest in the layering of time and experience – what he describes as the ‘collapse of time into a single moment.’ The repeated inscriptions evoke acts of devotion, memory and ritual. The act of layering reflects thought, meditation and the passage of time, with each work serving as a visual prayer.
Collectively, the panels create an environment that is at once intimate and monumental. They evoke walls, thresholds, or portals – architectural in scale and yet deeply human in tone. This presentation encourages viewers to slow down, reflect and engage with a space where time feels suspended and meaning emerges not from isolated phrases but from accumulated impressions. The works blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, as well as between the personal and the universal, and between East and West. They offer a powerful expression of Khan’s dual heritage and his ongoing commitment to a universal visual language rooted in repetition, history and spiritual exploration.
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Works
10Idris Khan
Drawing inspiration from the history of art and music as well as key philosophical and theological texts, Idris Khan investigates memory, creativity and the layering of experience. Khan's works – in media including sculpture, painting and photography – rely on a continuous process of creation and erasure, or the adding of new layers while retaining traces of what has gone before. He is celebrated for works in which techniques of layering are used to arrive at what might be considered the essence of an image, whereby something entirely new is created through repetition and superimposition.
While earlier works drew on pre-existing cultural artefacts and were about creating a totality from discrete parts, more recent series introduce another layer of mediation and are resolutely hand-made. Often taking many weeks to create, the results consist of many strands of text drawn from the artist's own writings in response to classic art historical, philosophical and religious tracts. These texts have profound resonance for the artist and describe his approach to creating work. However, for the viewer their full meaning is elusive. Khan suggests that our linear experience of time and place has a more shadowy relationship with memory and the subconscious, one that cannot be so easily grasped.
It is in this contemplative space that both the processes of Minimalist art and allusions to the role of repetition in the world’s major religions are brought into focus – as a vehicle for transcendence and a conduit of the sublime.
About the Artist
Born in Birmingham in 1978, Idris Khan completed his Master’s Degree at the Royal College of Art and lives and works in London.
He was appointed OBE for services to Art in the Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List. Khan’s first career survey exhibition in the United States, Idris Khan: Repeat After Me, was held at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA, in 2024.
Further survey exhibitions include Idris Khan: A World Within, held at The New Art Gallery Walsall in 2017, with solo presentations of the artist’s work previously staged at national and international institutional venues including the British Museum, London, UK (2018); Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester, UK (2016–17, 2012); Sadler’s Wells, London, UK (2011); Gothenburg Konsthall, Sweden (2011); Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada (2010); Kunsthaus Murz, Mürzzuschlag, Austria (2010) and K20, Düsseldorf, Germany (2008). His work has also been included in group shows at the Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London, UK (2023); Newlands House Gallery, Petworth, UK (2023); Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany (2021); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2020); Royal Academy, London, UK (2019, 2018); The Whitworth, Manchester (2019); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2018); New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2017); Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2017); Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland (2016); National Gallery of Art, Washington, US (2015); Bass Museum of Art, Miami, US (2014–15); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2014); Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida, US (2013); The British Museum, London, UK (2012); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway (2012); Fundament Foundation, Tilburg, The Netherlands (2011); Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, US (2010); and Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2009).
A major public sculpture for London by Khan, commissioned by St George’s Plc with London Borough of Southwark as part of the development of One Blackfriars, was unveiled in autumn 2019. In 2016, Khan was commissioned to make a permanent public monument, forming the centrepiece of the new Memorial Park in Abu Dhabi, which was unveiled on the UAE Commemoration Day. In 2017, it received an American Architecture Prize, a World Architecture News Award and a German Design Award. Further commissions include a wall drawing commissioned by the British Museum in 2012 for its exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam. In addition, for the duration of the exhibition, Khan’s monumental floor installation, Seven Times, was installed in the museum’s Great Court. Also in 2012, The New York Times Magazine commissioned Khan to create a new body of work for its London issue. Focusing on the capital’s most iconic buildings and structures, Khan’s image of the London Eye featured on the cover. Created in 2018 for The Albukhary Foundation Islamic Gallery, Khan's 21 Stones was the British Museum's first site-specific artwork.
Khan has also worked on significant collaborations across art forms. In 2014 he worked with choreographer Wayne McGregor and composer Max Richter on Richter’s recomposition of The Four Seasons, producing sets for the production which premiered at Zurich Opera House. Lying in Wait, 2009, a collaboration by Khan and choreographer Sarah Warsop in association with Victoria Miro and Siobhan Davies Dance, is formed of layered movement that travels between three screens.
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