Imran Qureshi's first solo exhibition in the UK, an installation specially created for the ground-floor gallery at Modern Art Oxford, is small and restrained. You may already have passed it on your way to the larger exhibition upstairs, but sparing time to look more closely at it and the four miniatures alongside is rewarding indeed. Qureshi is Professor of Fine Arts in Lahore and one of Pakistan's most notable exponents of contemporary miniature painting. Working from the Mughal heritage - with its emphasis on draughtsmanship, delicate repetition of decorative motifs and layers of colour - he adds a contemporary twist.

Qureshi has taken decorative elements from the tradition and enlarged and painted them as radiating bursts of foliage - in the exquisite blue of Islamic art. Then, in contrast to the arabesques, rivulets of paint dribble down the walls. It's a subtle work, so much so that you walk by its unimposing tracery yet somehow find you've absorbed its essence.

To Qureshi this essence is the tension between life-giving and destructive forces. Exhibition curator Suzanne Cotter thinks "his expressive symbolism might also refer to the state of different parts of the world today, in which violence and destruction are the tragic reality that lies behind the seductive rhetoric of democracy and peace".

The miniatures, from Qureshi's ongoing series, Moderate Enlightenment, are personal reflections on the politics of war, religion, and the day-to-day realities of contemporary Pakistan. Every motif in Qureshi's work is significant. Miniatures historically showed high-status individuals in set poses, whereas these portraits are of students and totally of the moment: devout Muslims taking part in playful and prosaic activities. The veiled woman in long robe carries a book and satchel; the bearded man in national dress blowing bubbles (pictured) wears camouflage-patterned socks, a motif that hints at the "aestheticisation of war"; the bubbles themselves and the dragonflies they float among signify the transience of life.

In September, Qureshi worked with students from Oxford's Community School in Modern Art Oxford's Encounters series, which aims to introduce UK audiences to the work of artists from around the world. Imran Qureshi: Aftermath continues until December 16; a free exhibition tour takes place at 3pm on Saturday, November 24.