Idris Khan (B. 1978)

Idris Khan’s deployment of photographic and textual reproduction delves into a metaphysical and existential truth that reaches far beyond the source material itself. With his 2013 series Beyond the Black, from which the current work is taken, Khan layers a hand-stamped chorus of identical words thousands of times over, until the indecipherable body of text implodes in a thickly illegible, black interstellar mass. The textual source is Khan’s own response to Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, an attempt to supersede Nietzsche’s claim that aesthetic phenomenon is the sole justification for existence, unveiling a concealed metaphysical truth that goes beyond Nietzschean aesthetics. This theoretical imperative takes the form of a colossal Big Bang of densely incomprehensible, monochrome text, pictorially recalling the intense weight of the black canvases of modernist masters and similarly demanding the experiential, attentive reflection of the viewer.