Comprising a series of panels painted in jewel-like hues embellished with gold leaf, Time Present, Time Past 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.

London-based artist Idris Khan was born in the UK in 1978. Since completing his Master’s Degree with a Distinction in Research at the Royal College of Art in London in 2004, he has received international acclaim for his minimal, yet emotionally charged photographs, videos and sculptures and is without question one of the most exciting British artists of his generation.

Drawing on diverse cultural sources including literature, history, art, music and religion, Khan has developed a unique narrative involving densely layered imagery that inhabits the space between abstraction and figuration and speaks to the themes of history, cumulative experience and the metaphysical collapse of time into single moments. Khan’s oeuvre has expanded to include sculpture and painting. For sculptural works, using materials such as steel plates, cubes and horizontal stone slabs, Khan sandblasts the surface with templates of musical scores or prayers, continuing his investigation into the ways in which cultural, visual, cinematic and temporal memories coalesce into a dense, synesthetic whole.

In 2024, Idris Khan had his first solo American museum exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. In 2026, The Obama Presidential Center commissioned Khan's Sky of Hope, a monumental ceiling installation that layers thousands of hand-stamped words from President Obama's Selma speech honoring Civil Rights leaders, transforming the ceiling into a radiant field of color and language. Khan has also had solo exhibitions at international venues including The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, England; Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester, England; the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada; K20, Dusseldorf, Germany; and Gothenburg Konsthall, Sweden. He has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions at venues including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Britain, London, England; Hayward Gallery, London, England; The Saatchi Gallery, London, England; Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow, Russia; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Helsinki Kunsthalle, Finland. In 2017 Idris Khan was appointed an OBE for services to Art in the Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honors List.

His work is in the permanent collections of many institutions worldwide such as The Saatchi Collection, London, England; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.

Idris Khan lives and works in London, England.