Wolf Kahn 2015

The horizontal color bands of this and other paintings are telling of Kahn’s studies under Hans Hoffman, famed for his investigation of color relationships. Kahn has employed this technique for decades, a means to differentiate foreground, midground and background, but here he paints them flatly, in swaths of color, which inadvertently imply depth. He does it with saturation in Stand of Trees (2014), and with more modesty in Five Poplars (2014). Kahn appreciates the simplicity in and mystery of this method, exercised repeatedly and never failing to create a scene of depth and substance. To the artist, landscape is something to be endlessly studied, and allowed to manifest itself in myriad ways. In a quote published in the early part of the 90s, Kahn’s seventh decade, he explained his fascination with landscape: Through our investigation of landscape we can express our sense of the connectedness of things, where we stand in relation to them. Above all, we come in touch with those over-arching abstractions that govern our perceptions: the great and the small, near and far, up and down, sharp and soft, smooth and rough. None of this is likely to change soon. There is no end to this investigation, because there is no end to the ways humanity can experience the landscape. Wolf Kahn is one of the greatest living artists to humbly admit this, evidenced by his continually shared perspective through this and other bodies of work.

FIVE POPLARS 2014 Oil on Canvas 22 x 28 inches

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