Through the media of photography Idris Khan creates dramatic and emotive images resembling charcoal drawing and oil painting more than photography. Using transparent layers of photographs he builds up images that have the richness, intensity and luminosity of any oil painting.

Khan explores the tensions of authorship by photographing famous images and texts and reworking them. To this end he has made his own visual interpretations of the Koran and works by artists such as William Turner, and Bernd and Hilla Becher, famous for their vast photographic collections of buildings and industrial sites.

“it’s obviously not about re-photographing the photographs to make exact copies, but to intervene and bring a spectrum of feelings – warmth, humour, anxiety – to what might otherwise be considered cool aloof image. You can see the illusion of my hand in the layering. It looks like a drawing. It’s not systematic or uniform.”
Victoria Miro Gallery

Idris Khan was born in 1978 and graduated from RCA with his Masters in Fine Art in 2003.

Courtesy: C. Woods