gallery neptune & brown
Wolf Kahn: Color Creates Light

Wolf Kahn: Color Creates Light
Wolf Kahn
For Wolf Kahn, the process of making monotypes is a creatively rewarding one. His process involves working in tandem alongside a master printer with zinc plates, large wet sheets of heavy Arches paper, and a massive etching press. A lush array of Caran d’Ache water-based crayon inks await as composition, scale and color are applied and ready for a single run through the etching press.
This exhibition explores Kahn’s printmaking, which is an embodiment of his mentor Hans Hofmann’s statement, “color creates the light.” Through studies of color in what one may regard as a romantic landscape, oak trees and barns are transformed from their everyday presence. “For an artist” he asserts, “it can often be said that when he’s looking, he’s working.” And it is in this process of looking that Kahn begins to abstract the spaces where sky meets barn, barn meets the messy foreground, or the branches of a pecan tree interrupt and melt into the sky. The artist’s passion for monotypes has resulted in the creation of many landscape compositions through which his subjects “transcend the everyday...to represent an overarching insight.”
Image Credit:
Wolf Kahn, Orange Band, 1990

Wolf Kahn
Orange Band
1990
Plate size: 13 1/2 x 22 inches Sheet size: 22 x 30 inches Frame size: 25 1/2 x 33 inches
Monotype with pastel
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Wolf Kahn
Barn with Propped Door II
2002
Plate size: 9 x 12 inches Sheet size: 21 x 28 1/2 inches Frame size: 24 x 32 1/2 inches
Monotype and pastel
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Wolf Kahn in the studio, 2007
Wolf Kahn
Dense Magenta Forest
2006
Plate size: 9 x 12 inches Sheet size: 15 x 20 3/4 inches Frame size: 18 x 24 inches
Monotype with pastel
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Wolf Kahn
In Southbury CT, Dusk
1990
Plate size: 14 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches Sheet size: 20 5/8 x 25 7/8 inches Frame size: 24 x 29 inches
Monotype
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Wolf's studio table with boxes of Caran d'Ache water-based crayon inks alongside paint containers, 2007
Wolf Kahn
Long Barn, Pink and Purple
2002
Plate size: 12 x 15 3/4 inches Sheet size: 22 1/2 x 30 inches Frame size: 25 3/4 x 33 inches
Monotype with pastel
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Wolf Kahn
Orange Band
1990
Plate size: 13 1/2 x 22 inches
Sheet size: 22 x 30 inches
Frame size: 25 1/2 x 33 inches
Monotype with pastel
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Monotype plates in the studio, 2007
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Sauna Cabin
Wolf Kahn
1990
Plate size: 14 x 21 1/2 inches Sheet size: 21 1/2 x 28 1/4 inches Frame size: 23 1/2 x 31 inches
Monotype
Wolf Kahn
Wet Feet
2001
Plate size: 14 x 11 inches
Sheet size: 30 x 22 inches
Frame size: 33 x 25 inches
Monotype
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Wolf Kahn
Gray Purple Verticals
2012
Plate size: 16 x 24 inches Sheet size: 21 1/4 x 28 3/4 inches
Monotype
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Kahn is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Medal of Arts. His work can be found in the permanent collections of over forty-five institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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gallery neptune & brown
1530 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
2029861200