Installation view, Wyatt Kahn, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Löwenbräu Areal, Zurich, 2014
Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to announce the first exhibition of New York-based artist Wyatt Kahn.
Wyatt Kahn has come to prominence on the international art scene with a series of works using a technique that he developed, building forms by cutting shaped MDF stretcher panels and covering them with raw canvas. He then assembles them together, using the three-dimensional elements to create a two-dimensional work. This allows him to explore the realm of the pictorial composition beyond the traditional techniques and avoids flatness. The gaps between the stretchers create the lines of an abstract composition but also opens the possibility for another space and another image, thus the wall on which the canvas is hanging becomes an active part of the work.
Having evolved from using white canvases, the artist explored the possibility of an underlying monochromatic color, creating different hues of colors on the surface, allowing that color to come through in a muted way. For this new exhibition, Kahn presents a new body of work that focuses on a concept of representation of an object through all its aspects: visual, sensational, and conceptual. For these works, the shaped stretchers come together to create the shape of the actual object, the motifs used to cover the first layer of the stretchers are the epitome of the representation of that object, drawn by hand in an almost automatic way. These works are extremely intricate and also fathom the possibility of synesthesia in a visual form.