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LIGHT BOXIdris Khan

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L A S Nwords:MARK RAPPOLT

portrait:ANTOINE D'AGATA

Blossfeldt... AfterKarl Blossfeldt'Art Forms inNature', 2005,Lamda digitalC-print mountedon aluminium,258 x 192 cm

IDRIS KHAN IS A PHOTOGRAPHER LIKE NO OTHER. That's largely because a lot of the timehis photographs don't look like photographs at all. Sometimes they look like drawings, sometimesthey look like paintings and sometimes... well, sometimes they look like bad photocopies. (That's badin the sense of almost illegible, which is precisely not what a photocopy is supposed to be.)Nevertheless, over the past two years the twenty-eight-year-old has been generating a lot of fuss:he's had his work bought by Charles Saatchi, created a stir at the 2004 Frieze Art Fair, been featuredin The Independent's list of top-ten emerging London talents and been photographed suited, bootedand lounging beneath a tree for the London Evening Standards version of the same. But don't letall that put you off. In between the glamour shoots he's managed to put on an extremely successfulsolo show at San Francisco's Fraenkel Gallery and is currently preparing for his big London debut atVictoria Miro this September.>

105 ARTREVIEW

I

LIGHT BOXIdris Khan

you almost get the feelingthat Khan has taken a comedy mallet to the structures

the Bechers venerated,beaten the crap out of them

(the structures not the Bechers)and then rushed back to photograph it

ARTREVIEW 106

LIGHT BOXIdris Khan

"I don't try to make a photograph look like apainting or drawing," the Birmingham-born artistprotests, while pacing around his spotless north-London studio. "It just happens." On the wall behindhim is every.. Bernd & Hilla Becher Prison TypeGasholder (2004). Black, smudgy and everywherecovered with the ghostly traces of what seem to bepartially rubbed-out areas, it looks, inescapably, likea charcoal rendering. Albeit made by one of themost anxious and indecisive draftsmen of all time.But that effect "just happens" as a result of the wayKhan creates his work - by layering a number ofphotographic images one on top of the other, whiledigitally manipulating them to emphasise certaindetails or to enhance areas of light and shade.Nevertheless, the fact that the photographs uponwhich Khan's works are based are not generally hisown, but are instead appropriated - from theoeuvres of celebrated practitioners from themedium's past, such as the Bechers, Karl Blossfeldtor Eadward Muybridge, from musical scores, otherpeople's paintings and from works of literature -combined with the fact that his digital manipulationsoccur with the aid of a graphics tablet and stylus(the computer equivalent of pen and paper), makesyou wonder whether calling what Khan does'photography' isn't actually a little perverse. "Maybeit goes back to frustration at the fact that I can'tdraw," Khan concedes, "and so I have to make aphotograph look like a drawing." But, then again,why worry? It's precisely that kind of perversity thatgenerates the most arresting aspects of his work.

every.. Bernd & Hilla Becher Prison TypeGasholder is, as the title suggests, every Becherphotograph of that particular shape of gastank mashed one on top of the other and presentedas a single image. The result is a curious mix ofthe iconic and the iconoclastic. On the one hand it'sthe summary of all prison-type gasholders and anact of homage to the Bechers - Khan focusing the

facing page:every... Bernd &Hilla Becher TypeGasholder, 2004,Lamda digitalC print mountedon aluminium,203 x 165 cm

below:every... stave ofFrederick Chopin'sNocturnes forLhe Piano, 2004,Lamda digitalC-print mountedon aluminium,89 x 279 cm

left:from RisingSeries... AfterEadweard Muybridge

'Human and AnimalLocomotion', 2005,5 x platinumprints, each print51 x 41 cm

same kind of obsessive intensity (months spentlayering, lightening, darkening, retouching)on Bernd and Hilla's imagery that led the Germancouple to spend more than 40 years producing theirfetishistic typology of neglected industrialarchitecture. "I thought about how I could capturethe aura of a piece of artwork," Khan says. On theother hand it's an act of vandalism, a wilfulundermining of the clinical and objective methodof Becher photography, which Khan replaces with anexpressionistic rendering of a building whosepulsating, blurry outline suggests that it is strugglingto escape the constraints of its designated 'prison-type' form. Indeed, you almost get the feeling thatKhan has taken a comedy mallet to the structuresthe Bechers so famously venerated, beaten the crapout of them (the structures, not the Bechers) andthen rushed back to photograph the architecturewhile it's still vibrating as a result of that pounding.Perhaps it's not surprising then that "frustration" is aword that crops up frequently while Khan discusseshis work. Or that he describes his resonating imageryas the result of a process thatis "like visualising a sound".

In works like every., stave of Frederick Chopin's

Nocturnes for the Piano (2004) or Struggling toHear... After Ludwig van Beethoven Sonatas (2005)Khan has approached that last task in a more literalfashion, producing photographic club sandwichesfilled with the staves and pages of the relevantmusical scores. The Chopin is a barely legiblejumble, the Beethoven an almost solid black blur.But while it's almost impossible to make out the

individual notes that constitute the music, theseworks do serve to bring certain aspects of Khan'spractice into sharp focus.

107 ARTREVIEW

LIGHT BOXIdris Khan

"When I make the music pieces there's a certainfrustration involved," the artist says, warming to hisfavourite theme, "because when I was growingup I could read music, but I played by ear." Like theBecher pieces, Khan's musical works are iconsinasmuch as they represent the sum totalof a musical composition and are consequently,in technical terms, complete descriptions of thatparticular work. But they are also iconoclastic inthat they defy any attempts to read them to thepoint that they seem to celebrate, almost gleefully,the erasure of any coherent instruction as to howthat music should be performed. The Beethovenpiece is all of Beethoven's sonatas and it is none,just as the Becher gasholder is every gasholderand none.

"I wanted to capture that same kind of struggleBeethoven had while losing his hearing," Khanexplains. 'And to recreate that experience with theviewer." In doing so, Khan also highlights the gapbetween the representation of sound (in the formof written music) and actual sound, just as theBecher piece highlights the gap between aphotograph and the object it represents (yes, youcan photograph every prison-type gasholder, theBecher work seems to say, but that doesn't meanyou've necessarily captured the reality of what aprison-type gasholder is). As much as Khan iscompressing a series of photographs he also seemsto be tearing photography, and the commonly heldnotion of its objective and mechanical qualities,apart. "It's a battle against the photographic surfacein some ways," he concedes.

Perhaps, then, what's most engaging about Khan'swork is that it provides a thrill similar to thatprovoked by the element of risk involved in anybattle. A thrill that comes about in the way in whichhis layered images seem to court their owndestruction - what exactly does a black streak tell usabout Beethoven's sonatas? 'Nothing' would be anot unreasonable answer - while openingthemselves up to quite searching, human speculation- what's it like to go deaf? Or, in the case of theBechers, and their obsessive archiving of thetwentieth century's forgotten monuments,speculation about the nature of memory and lostpasts. ('A lot of my work has to do with memory orsearching for something - that blurriness of amemory where you can't quite pinpoint it.") And it'sgoing to be intriguing, to say the least, to see howKhan continues to push the limits of his humanisedphotography in future works.

In fact, Khan is already taking things a stagefurther and is currently working on his first videoproject, to be screened at London's inlVA, also inSeptember. It consists, once more, of layeredimages, this time of a solo cello player performing allof Bach's cello suites, and, in a new twist, featuressound. "Last night I was watching the playbacks,"the artist says rather nervously, "and thinking that it'seither going to be really frustrating or really, reallynice - people may want to leave because it soundslike a wailing cat." Chances are they won't.

While his layered and compressed images aremade in a sophisticated manner, and openthemselves up to equally sophisticated analysis(elements of which - Freud's uncanny, bits andpieces of Barthes -Khan has made direct referenceto in other works) what they try to express issomething basic and primal, something that, attimes, doesn't feel too far removed from a gruntor a scream. •

Work by Idris Khan is on show at Victoria Miro Gallery,London from 2 to 30 September. After... Bach's CelloSuites... A Memory is at inIVA, London from 13September to 22 October.

left:Cellist, Gabriella

Swallow and directorof photography Belinda

Parsons during theshooting of Idris

Khan's After... Bach'sCello Suites ... A

Memory, June 2006.Photo: Thierry Bal

ARTREVIEW 108

LIGHT BOXIdris Khan

every... WilliamTurner postcardfrom Tate Britain,2004, Lamda digitalC-print mountedon aluminium,

101 x 127 cm.

All images courtesy

Victoria Miro

Gallery, London

'I don't try and make a photograph look like a painting

or a drawingit just

happens.'

109 ARTREVIEW

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: BORN OF FRUSTRATION: IDRIS KHAN’S ICONS OFICONOCLASM

SOURCE: Art Review (London, England) no2 Ag 2006PAGE(S): 104-9

WN: 0621304391032

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