ART CITIES:Zurich-Wyatt Kahn
Wyatt Kahn is primarily known for his investigations into the visual and spatial relationship between painting and sculpture. Using unprimed canvases stretched over wooden frames, Kahn assembles complex wall-mounted 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.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive
In his newest reliefs, Wyatt Kahn strays from the previous two-dimensional line of advancement and initiates a third dimension in a deeper constellation. “This past year made me look back at the foundational structures of my practice and add layers of chaos on top of them,” explains Kahn. The usual cadence of shapes, which shares affinities with Harvey Quaytman’s swooning forms and the strategies of the Supports/Surfaces movement, is redirected into an echo. Planes that would usually radiate outwards, right and left, now pile up on top of each other, obstructing each other, complicating the picture with physical depth and shadowy perspective. The paintings consist of forms and gaps. I build the forms by cutting shaped MDF stretcher panels and covering them with raw canvas. Assembled and bolted together, the three-dimensional forms visually flatten out and become the compositional elements of a two-dimensional picture plane. The gaps between the forms subsequently appear as lines within a geometric pictorial composition. His paintings thoroughly integrate pictorial space with that of the object. Each shape within the composition is the shape it is, but it also depicts the shape it is. Each composition’s linear aspects—the edges of the forms—purposely both create and disturb pictorial perspective. I use raw canvas to focus attention on these shifting formal and conceptual relationships. The arcs and circles in “Piled Up (Ben’s Dream)” and “Untitled”, which harken back to Lygia Clark’s Neo-Concrete Ovo, suggest the fast passing of solar and cyclical time. The titles of particular works, such as “Seated Bather” or “The Old Man”, are nods to early Modernism’s preoccupations with lush arcadias, strewn with figures, even if we are only left with its foundational parts and limbs. Language, unspoken, unshared, or solemnly uttered in a vacuum, piles up. The way in which these new occlusions incite the body to move in a new choreography of apprehending recalls Willys de Castro, as well as Lee Bontecou. And yet, this absorption of references, forced through the simplest materials, is expressed in a visual language that is Kahn’s alone. It is an inventory of the artist’s syntax that guides us into the histories that inform his lexicon.
Photo Left: Wyatt Kahn, Untitled (Green), 2019, Oil stick on lead panel, 237.5 x 172.5 cm, © Wyatt Kahn, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber. Right: Wyatt Kahn, Untitled, 2017, Lead on panel, 244.5 x 179 cm, © Wyatt Kahn, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber
Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zahnradstrasse 21, Zurich, Duration: 15/1-20/2/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Fri 12:00-18:00, sat 11:00-17:00, www.presenhuber.com
