Idris Khan
Idris Khan (born 1978, Birmingham, England) is an artist based in London.[1]
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. Photographing or scanning from secondary source material–sheet music, pages from the Qur’an, reproductions of late Caravaggio paintings–he then builds up the layers of scans digitally, which allows him to meticulously control minute variances in contrast, brightness and opacity. The resultant images are often large-scale C-prints with surfaces that have a remarkable optical intensity. (for instance, every page of the Qur'an, every Beethoven sonata, every William Turner postcard from Tate Britain), or every Bernd and Hilla Becher spherical gasholder.[1][2]- This visual layering also occurs in Khan’s videos, such as Last Three Piano Sonatas…after Franz Schubert, a three-channel video installation wherein he films multiple camera angles that capture numerous performances of the sonatas Schubert composed on his deathbed. The work is both an elegy and a paean to creative genius. As Khan explains, “The last three sonatas form a kind of cycle and thus illuminate one another when performed. Thematic, rhythmic and harmonic links are evident between the movement of each sonata and they also hold the idea that each piece is in some way inhabiting the persona of the lonely, alienated wanderer.” As with his richly layered photographic images, the meaning of the work emerges slowly and experientially with the passage of time.
Khan’s oeuvre has expanded to include sculpture. 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.
Most recently, Khan has been commissioned by the British Museum in London to create a new wall drawing for the forthcoming exhibition, Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, which opens January 26, 2012. In addition to the wall drawing, Khan’s stunning floor sculpture, Seven Times, will be installed in the museum’s majestic Great Court. The New York Times Magazine has commissioned Khan to create a new body of work that will be published in an upcoming issue.
Khan received a First in his BA from the University of Derby in 2000[citation needed] and his MA with Distinction from the Royal College of Art in 2004.[3] He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including those at the Taidehalli in Helsinki,[4] Musée de l'Élysée in Switzerland,[3] Victoria Miro Gallery in London[1] and the Saatchi Gallery in London.[4] He also created the cover art for Editors album An End Has A Start which utilises techniques he used in his Becher on Becher series of industrial buildings, in this case a gas-works.[citation needed]
Khan has had solo exhibitions at international venues including the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; K20, Dusseldorf; and Gothenburg Konsthall. He has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions at venues including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Britain, London; Hayward Gallery, London; The Saatchi Gallery, London; Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris; Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Helsinki Kunsthalle.
His work is in the permanent collections of many institutions worldwide such as The Saatchi Collection, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the de Young Museum, San Francisco; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
He is represented by Sean Kelly Gallery New York, Galerie Thomas Schulte (Berlin), Victoria Miro Gallery (London), Yvon Lambert Gallery (Paris)[5] and Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco).
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Biography, Victoria Miro Gallery
- ^ See discussion by Dan Hicks and Mary Beaudry 2006. The Place of Historical Archaeology. In D. Hicks and M.C. Beaudry (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 8-9 - [1]
- ^ a b www.iniva.org Idris Khan
- ^ a b Saatchi Gallery Biography: Idris Kahn
- ^ Yvon Lambert
