Wyatt Kahn
Artist Spotlight
Wyatt Kahn Builds Paintings Worth Collecting Now
There is a particular kind of quiet confidence radiating from the work of Wyatt Kahn right now. Galleries in New York and across Europe have been paying close attention to this American artist whose shaped, paneled constructions occupy a genuinely singular space in contemporary painting. His work arrives at a cultural moment when collectors and institutions alike are asking serious questions about what painting can be in three dimensions, and Kahn answers those questions with remarkable clarity and physical intelligence. To stand before one of his works is to feel the pull of both the… Continue reading
Artists in conversation
Ellsworth Kelly
Kelly similarly explored shaped canvases and the relationship between painting and sculptural form, using hard edged geometry and raw material presence to challenge conventional picture making.
Brice Marden
Marden shares Kahn's commitment to materiality and the physical substance of painting, emphasizing linen and raw surfaces while working within a restrained geometric and minimalist vocabulary.
Richard Tuttle
Tuttle similarly blurs the boundary between painting and object through irregular assembled forms, emphasizing modest materials and the handmade quality of constructed pictorial surfaces.
Artists who inspired them
Frank Stella
Stella pioneered the shaped canvas as a conceptual and formal device, directly anticipating Kahn's practice of constructing paintings from multiple joined panels that assert their own objecthood.
Donald Judd
Judd's insistence on the specific object and the integrity of materials profoundly informed Kahn's emphasis on the physical facts of the canvas and its construction as subject matter in itself.
Robert Ryman
Ryman's sustained investigation of canvas support, surface texture, and the literal conditions of painting provided a key conceptual foundation for Kahn's focus on materiality and process.