Idris Khan

Idris Khan works with photography, painting, drawing and sculpture, bringing these mediums together to create densely layered works. His practice examines experiences of global displacement and conflict, and his works sensitively unravel various political, social and spiritual threads. His process always begins with research, reading countless philosophical, cultural and theological texts, or surveying music scores and canonical works from art history. While consuming this source material, Khan will extract certain details and write his own meditations of the cultural matter. Through processes of addition, erasure and condensing, Khan then begins to concentrate these references. In his earliest works, Khan digitally layered images, photographs or markings over and over again to create gestural prints. Other projects have seen Khan stamp notations and phrases repeatedly onto canvas or sculptural surfaces such as aluminium. Eventually, the original source is lost and a new work is born out of these repetitive acts. Working in a signature monochrome palette, his works have a distinct minimalist aesthetic. The original references are obscured via Khan’s meticulous processes, and the novel works are sensorially rich, urging viewers to detangle these metaphysical collages.