Absence of Light

Works on paper, Qureshi has developed his recent experiments using the soldering iron as a drawing tool. Starting with handmade heavy-duty watercolor paper and layering it with successive washes of iron oxide pigment, the artist painstakingly burns onto the blackened surface, pinprick by pinprick. At first hard to distinguish, and echoing the experience of night vision, the eyes adjusting to the conditions of darkness, the image comes gradually into focus: an impression of the surface of the moon, pitted with craters, sculpted by millennia of crashing meteors.