Idris Khan, Bach...six suites for the solo cello, 2006
Idris Khan's first solo exhibition in the UK opens at the Victoria Miro Gallery tonight. Khan has already gained considerable attention since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2003 with an MA in Fine Art. Victoria Miro included him in a group photography show last year and presented many of his works at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2005. Earlier this year Khan was given a widely acclaimed exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.
Idris Khan re-photographs and digitally layers a sequence or series of pictures in an enigmatic play of appropriation and re-creation. His photographs possess characteristics more akin to drawing or painting and are presented as a kind of photographic palimpsest, animated by the accumulative intervention of the artist's hand.
Fascinated by the images, practitioners and theoretical writings that have influenced the history of photography, the artist has recently moved beyond the subject of photography to literature and music. Idris Khan's sources range from Beethoven's piano sonatas, to pages of text from Freud's seminal work, The Uncanny, and the paintings of Caravaggio.
Idris Khan's exhibition at Victoria Miro runs in conjunction with a presentation of Khan's first film installation, A Memory...after Bach's Cello Suites, a project jointly commissioned by Victoria Miro Gallery and inIVA, where it will be screened from 13 September until 22 October 2006.
Your Gallery magazine asked Idris Khan, given his particular interest in music, to tell us what he's been listening to while working on his most recent pieces which can be seen at Victoria Miro and inIVA:
"When I make my music pieces - i.e the ones in my show - I listen to the piece of music I am working with. I need to almost feel the music to be able to create the visual emotion that exists in one of my pieces. I would listen to the music over and over again. For my recent film piece I listened to Bach's 'cello suites so much that I couldn't stand to hear them any longer. But once I started to work with the sound, and layer the music I knew I had to listen to them so much to be able to choose which notes would merge into the other to capture the essence of Bach.
When I'm not working with classical music I like to listen to BBC London to understand more about where I live and work, Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live!"
Rising Series..... After Eadweard Muybridge 'Human and Animal Locomotion', 2005
Sigmund Freud's 'The Uncanny', 2006
All images courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Idris Khan
2-30 September
Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road
London N1
Tel: +44 (0)207 336 8109
www.victoria-miro.com
A Memory After Bach's Cello Suites
13 September - 22 October
inIVA
6-8 Standard Place
Rivington Street
London EC2A 3BE
Tel: +44 (0)20 7729 9616
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