Hassan Khan
25 Sep - 19 Oct 2013
HASSAN KHAN
Density Studies
15 September – 19 October 2013
Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam is very proud to host artist, musician and writer Hassan Khan (b. 1975, lives and works in Cairo, Egypt) with Density Studies, his first solo presentation in The Netherlands. The exhibition consists of six recent pieces: two sculptural works; a photographic print on a custom made table; two films, each of them beamed on translucent screens; and two groups of small color photographs. All of the works are placed within an imaginary grid and facing the same direction, pulled as if each piece, being a single self-contained work, is nevertheless part of a larger force, part of a greater magnetizing whole.
At the heart of Khan’s work are people, their relationships, what they produce and live with, the societies they build and personas they construct. In most of his films the expressions of vernacular behaviour are an important theme. His latest film, Studies for structuralist film n.2, is both a portrait of strangers encountering what’s outside them as much as it is a subtle dialogue between the viewer, artist and the subject.
Khan’s sculptures speak an enigmatic formal language but at a second glance are also loaded with hidden meanings. Perhaps his sculptures are the pars pro toto for the things around us, as fragments and as whole objects; as sublimations of a public consciousness and haunted by the world they come from.
According to writer Brian Kuan-Wood, a key to his work, is Khan’s particular approach to the way ideological thinking and spectrality function in relation to physical material. In an attempt to revisit the quasi-religious and messianic thinking in recent philosophy of history, the term ‘hauntology’ is used to describe this spectral ontology. It is possibly from here that some of Khan’s objects find their ground: as a compression of social desires.
Hassan Khan is, besides his work as an artist, well known as a musician active in experimental music. He has composed soundtracks for film and theatre, as well as performs his original music all around the world.
Khan’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In recent years he has had solo exhibitions at SALT, Istanbul (2012), Objectif Exhibition, Antwerp and the Queens Museum of Art (both 2011) and Kunst Halle St Gallen (2010). His work was shown at dOCUMENTA(13) and other group shows at the Wiener Secession (2013), Triennale de Paris, New Museum New York and Palazzo Grassi (all in 2012), Muzeum Sztuki Lodz (2011), Manifesta 8 (2010), MACBA Barcelona (2009) and the 3rd Yokohama Triennale (2008).
Density Studies
15 September – 19 October 2013
Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam is very proud to host artist, musician and writer Hassan Khan (b. 1975, lives and works in Cairo, Egypt) with Density Studies, his first solo presentation in The Netherlands. The exhibition consists of six recent pieces: two sculptural works; a photographic print on a custom made table; two films, each of them beamed on translucent screens; and two groups of small color photographs. All of the works are placed within an imaginary grid and facing the same direction, pulled as if each piece, being a single self-contained work, is nevertheless part of a larger force, part of a greater magnetizing whole.
At the heart of Khan’s work are people, their relationships, what they produce and live with, the societies they build and personas they construct. In most of his films the expressions of vernacular behaviour are an important theme. His latest film, Studies for structuralist film n.2, is both a portrait of strangers encountering what’s outside them as much as it is a subtle dialogue between the viewer, artist and the subject.
Khan’s sculptures speak an enigmatic formal language but at a second glance are also loaded with hidden meanings. Perhaps his sculptures are the pars pro toto for the things around us, as fragments and as whole objects; as sublimations of a public consciousness and haunted by the world they come from.
According to writer Brian Kuan-Wood, a key to his work, is Khan’s particular approach to the way ideological thinking and spectrality function in relation to physical material. In an attempt to revisit the quasi-religious and messianic thinking in recent philosophy of history, the term ‘hauntology’ is used to describe this spectral ontology. It is possibly from here that some of Khan’s objects find their ground: as a compression of social desires.
Hassan Khan is, besides his work as an artist, well known as a musician active in experimental music. He has composed soundtracks for film and theatre, as well as performs his original music all around the world.
Khan’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In recent years he has had solo exhibitions at SALT, Istanbul (2012), Objectif Exhibition, Antwerp and the Queens Museum of Art (both 2011) and Kunst Halle St Gallen (2010). His work was shown at dOCUMENTA(13) and other group shows at the Wiener Secession (2013), Triennale de Paris, New Museum New York and Palazzo Grassi (all in 2012), Muzeum Sztuki Lodz (2011), Manifesta 8 (2010), MACBA Barcelona (2009) and the 3rd Yokohama Triennale (2008).