Idris Khan

This work falls in the category of "why didn't I think of that?" Khan appropriates other artist's imagery, and re-configures/layers it to produce his own shimmering dream-like take on the subject. In the cases of the photographs here, he used the work of Bernd and Hilda Becher.



Khan's work reminds me of this piece by the artist Tom Friedman, who superimposed three hundred photographs of himself in his childhood. The image is as distant as memory and just as abstract. I've been very interested lately in the notion of how we are defined almost entirely as human beings by the memories we retain. Whereas as Khan is a self-professed Photoshopaholic, I believe Friedman used traditional photographic processes to create this piece.