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IDRIS KHAN, Cell, 2017, 15 painted columns, honeycomb and carbon fiber, 400 × 235 × 165 cm. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice.
Idris Khan operates best on the edges of legibility. His previous photographic works have relied heavily both for their effect and aesthetic on the obscurity that arises from layering images and text, and the ghostly, softened textures this creates. In one of the earlier pieces for which he is known, Every. . . Page of the Holy Quran (2004), the superimposition of every leaf in Islam’s central text results in an image that is less concrete and yet visually more complete than the object it portrays. In the exhibition “Absorbing Light” at London’s Victoria Miro gallery, the artist showcased a selection of works made in 2017 that were more solid in their presence than past creations, but not always so comprehensive with respect to their subject matter.
The most striking piece, Cell, consists of 15 four-meter-high columns in a four-by-four configuration (minus one corner piece), with thin gaps between each allowing light to pass through. As the titles of both exhibition and artwork imply, the intended effect is an object that draws in and confines the viewer. However, presented on the fourth floor of the gallery and next to a wall-sized window, the piece lacks the sense of site-specificity that a creator of similar monoliths like Richard Serra might prioritize, and the pigment used does not sufficiently absorb the strong natural light to create an effective contrast between the columns and the space between them, as might—if not patented solely for his own use—Anish Kapoor’s Vantablack. In Forty Seven—a canvas consisting of vertical bars in two shades of black acrylic—Khan comes closer to effectively approaching the titular subject of the exhibition, but in a way that does little to advance the aesthetic explored in much earlier black-on-black paintings by artists like Ad Reinhardt, though it may differ in intent. This canvas is more effective for its relationship to Op Art, in that individual stripes illusorily cede to a single shade at the corners when the piece is viewed from the front, and this returns us to the familiar terrain in which Khan excels: readability at the margins.
In a series of three works, The Pain of Others (No.1), (No.2) and (No.3), lines of black text are repetitively stamped on a Dibond panel such that, in the areas where the script is most dense, there is only black. Where the writing is thinner, however, individual words become apparent, indicating possible narratives and lending greater impact to the obfuscation at the center. This is familiar ground for Khan, and does not advance his previous work other than to reflect the adoption of a darker palette, but is executed well. The real step forward in this show is to be found in the piece whose name it carries. Marking a novel use of materials for the artist, Absorbing Light, 46 consists of 46 variously sized bronze cuboids—the largest of which is 31.5 cm tall—that each bear raised lines of text rendered largely obscure by their dark patina. To attain a second degree of illegibility, Khan configured these blocks in a seemingly random order on a white plinth that occupies most of the gallery’s central floor space, evoking the abstruse patterns embossed in the punched cards of early computers—there is the implication of meaning here, but one that is indecipherable without the aid of an unnamed and absent key.
IDRIS KHAN, The Pain of Others (No. 1), 2017, ink and acrylic on diabond panel with aluminum subframe, 267 × 188 × 6 cm. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice.
IDRIS KHAN, Absorbing Light, 46, 2017, bronze, 46 parts, largest part 31.5 × 21.5 × 17.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice.
Whether a sense of incompleteness is beneficial to the work, as in Absorbing Light, or less so as in Cell, these creations are marked by a physical presence that until now has not been so prominent in Khan’s practice. Expanding on this, the implied presence of the artist himself makes Rhythms 21—one of the exhibition’s understated works—one of its most effective. Developing only slightly on previous creations such as Struggling to Hear. . . After Ludwig van Beethoven Sonatas (2005), in which many sheets of music are superimposed with an effect similar to that seen in the three works titled The Pain of Others, here Khan sticks 21 individual sheets directly onto canvases and paints over their staves with thick black oil paint. In this palimpsestic gesture, he breaks with the usual ethereality of his practice and a new kind of legibility emerges. What we can no longer see on the staff we read in the stroke.
Ned Carter Miles is ArtAsiaPacific’s London desk editor.
Idris Khan’s “Absorbing Light” is on view at Victoria Miro, London, until December 20, 2017.
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