WYATT KAHN

By focusing solely on painting’s underlying support, Kahn directs attentionfrom the pictorial surface to the edges of the canvases and the divisionalspaces. These crevices and openings are the spatial equivalents of lines andplanes, while the wall becomes an integral part of the composition. Likewise,the idea of a canvas as a single and uninterrupted surface is challenged: theseworks are splintered, yet coherent. Juxtapositions of organic and geometricshapes, a number of which recur throughout the artist’s oeuvre, are theenduring carriers of meaning. Whilst notionally abstract, the origins ofthese forms can often be traced back to Kahn’s engagement with art history,especially early modernism, as well as to daily life and varied emotional states.The work Harlequin, for example, speaks to Picasso’s works on the samesubject, while the forms in New Houston Street, Spring 2021 are derived fromthe arches of a new building in the said location.

Although colour featured heavily in Kahn’s previous exhibition at the gallery,it is absent in this recent body of work. What we see, instead, is a return tothe raw, untreated linen or the milled lead. The unprimed canvas and milledlead have their own natural hues and textures. Another key development is themulti-layered construction of the works. Three distinct strata are discernible:an intricate configuration of canvases between two sets of open, repeating andtransposed forms. The layers evoke the conventional organisation of a paintinginto foreground, middle ground and background. In Kahn’s compositions,however, they are as distinct as they are indivisible, weaving in and out of eachother to form a single composite image. This tripartite structure also opensitself up to a temporal reading, calling to mind the idea of a merging of past,present and future. One could also interpret the empty canvas as a tabularasa, an allusion to the absence of preconceived ideas. ‘On the one hand, theyare fully completed objects. On the other, they have a canvas in a state thatwould typically be considered incomplete or in progress–it would normallybe gessoed and painted,’ Kahn explains. ‘I felt this captured the nature ofthe moment. I think we are in a moment of change yet much of it is veryunfinished. There is both great anxiety and also incredible hope and beauty.I wanted these works to embody all this.’

In addition to the canvas reliefs, Wyatt Kahn presents a group of studies forNew Houston Street, Spring 2021. Created before, during and after the makingof this work, they testify to the importance of drawing and printmaking within his practice. Sketches, tracings, collages and charcoal sketches, as well as a selection of vibrant monotypes, provide a unique insight into the artist’sworking methods, while also revealing Kahn to be a rigorous draughtsman.

Wyatt Kahn (b. 1983) lives and works in New York. Later this year, he willpresent seven monumental sculptures for his first public installation, in anexhibition organised by Public Art Fund. His work is included in the collectionsof the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou,Paris; MOCA, Los Angeles; Dallas Museum of Art; MCA, Chicago; andAlbright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.