WYATT KAHN

Wyatt Kahn is primarily known for his investigations into the visual and spatial relationship between painting and sculpture. Kahn assembles complex wallmounted works in which the gaps between the individual canvases give rise to abstract or pictorial compositions. Rather than tracing the lines and shapes directly onto the canvas itself, he turns them into physical components of the artwork. Referencing the tradition of minimalist abstraction, Wyatt Kahnʼs monochrome multi-panel ʻpaintingsʼ are informed by a desire to explore nonillusory forms of representation. In essence, their subject becomes the interplay between two and three dimensions, as experienced via shifts in surface, structure and depth. In Kahnʼs work, the wall upon which the work is hung becomes an integral part of the composition. Interested in a paintingʼs potential to function as the very embodiment of the object it depicts, Kahn has also developed works in which the shaped stretchers combine to create the form of an actual object, while a synthesis of hand-drawn motifs and words epitomise its essential qualities.