Hyperattention Fantasy Realism, Trance-like Technique,
and “Critical-Paranoid” Tendencies in
Image-Making Today
David Cohen Art Critic, New York Sun
In association with Personal Space:
Paintings by Scott Kahn at Penn’s Arthur Ross Gallery
Thursday September 9, 2004
5:00 pm
Penn Humanities Forum, 3619 Locust Walk
Finesse, attention to detail, informational overload,
and self-absorbing craft are aspects of contemporary art that violate
modernist orthodoxies. On the occasion of the Personal
Space exhibition, New York Sun art critic and
artcritical.com editor David Cohen places Scott Kahn’s paintings
within the context of contemporaries as diverse as Mark Greenwold,
Fred Tomaselli, Julie Heffernan, and Chuck Close. Following Cohen’s
talk, meet the artist at the Arthur Ross Gallery reception and exhibition
(runs through October 24, 2004).
David Cohen
is art critic for the New York Sun, publisher and editor
of the online magazine, artcritical.com,
and gallery director at the New York Studio School. Exhibitions he
has organized at the Studio School include WATERCOLOR (2002), American
Cutout (2003), Lois Dodd: Nudes in the Landscape (2003-04), and drawing
surveys of William Tucker (2001), Ruth Miller (2001), and Thomas Nozkowski
(2002).
Detail from Interior by Scott Kahn, 1996.
Oil on linen.
Interior
is a landscape of a dream with a language of its own where everything
is irrational and tipsy. It's a funny image where I'm sort
of
crucified
to my bed at
sea in my bedroom. Yet I'm dreaming happily of cakes—
a
symbol of psychic nourishment.
—Scott Kahn
Born in London and educated at the University of Sussex
and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Cohen wrote
for leading newspapers and magazines in England and around the world
before emigrating to the United States in 1999. His books include
Henry Moore in the Bagatelle Gardens, Paris (1993) and
Jock McFadyen: A book about a Painter (2001). He also has
written substantial catalogue essays on such artists as Henry Moore,
S.W. Hayter, C.R.W. Nevinson, Lucian Freud, and Markus Lupertz.