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
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Wolf Kahn in the studio, 2007
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Wolf's studio table with boxes of Caran d'Ache water-based crayon inks alongside paint containers, 2007
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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.
gallery neptune & brown
can be reached at:
2029861200
1530 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005