At first, when you look the opening pieces in Idris Khan’s latest show, “Overture,” at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, you’ll notice they’re abstracts — lopsided bursts of white on white, like new, unstable stars. But upon closer inspection, the shapes reveal themselves to be overlapping lines of text, stamped and re-stamped painstakingly by Khan and a cadre of assistants. Born of a particularly difficult period in the artist’s personal life, the works took shape through the cathartic, mind-clearing act of pressing ink to paper, over and over. Now, the technique has evolved to tackle new topics, such as text relating to the displacement of refugees, and new forms, including stamping on glass panels. Khan even created a large site-specific example on the gallery wall.
The exhibition also showcases Khan’s photographic works — gnarled black and white images that combine painting and photography, blurring the lines of each medium. One of the more figurative examples, “Why Do They Go,” 2015, superimposes a shadowy silhouette over itself in receding iterations atop a faded image of bustling figures. It’s a more literal exploration of his refugee theme — more blatant, at least, than the sheer unease engendered by text that refuses to be read, of words that cannibalize themselves, crowding each other out by their own abundance.
Ultimately, the title, “Overture,” marks this show as a sort of opening act for Khan’s synthesis of his full artistic practice, using one medium to complement the other, swaying from clean white to messy greys, shaky figures to self-obscuring messages, guiding viewers smoothly from serene to unsettled by show’s end.
Idris Khan’s “Overture” is on view at Sean Kelly Gallery through October 24.
