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拍品专文
Reminiscent of a blurred film-still or an impressionistic drawing, Every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Gable Sided Houses, Every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison Type Gasholders and Every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical Type Gasholders (2004) by Idris Khan is a monumental three paneled, digitally layered series of images originally taken from the iconic pictures of Bernd and Hilla Becher.
The Bechers took their photos to nostalgically document the disappearing German industrial architecture. Grouping the images according to 'typology,' they would take hundreds of pictures of boldly articulated structures such as gasholders or gable-sided houses and then display them next to each other. In Khan's triptych, which comes at the start of his iconic series investigating the Bechers' works, he has meticulously adjusted the contrast and opacity of each of the hundreds of shots taken by the photographers of spherical type gasholders, gable sided houses and prison type gasholders. Having done this, he then meticulously split these images typographically into three groups, conflating each of the original photographs into three super-layered panels.
In Khan's work, the Bechers' photographs take on a ghostly quality, resembling chalk drawings. Like a spectre, the vestiges of a now defunct industrial infrastructure, which once exemplified the advances of modern engineering, re-emerge; the cool act of appropriation becoming a poignant reflection on authorship and time. It is the idea of a disappearing architectural language that Khan so poignantly takes up in his work. He conveys a sense of time depicted in motion, bringing the Becher's buildings back from the past, compressing the timeline of repetition from their numerous shots into indivisible moments encoded in the composition.
The Bechers took their photos to nostalgically document the disappearing German industrial architecture. Grouping the images according to 'typology,' they would take hundreds of pictures of boldly articulated structures such as gasholders or gable-sided houses and then display them next to each other. In Khan's triptych, which comes at the start of his iconic series investigating the Bechers' works, he has meticulously adjusted the contrast and opacity of each of the hundreds of shots taken by the photographers of spherical type gasholders, gable sided houses and prison type gasholders. Having done this, he then meticulously split these images typographically into three groups, conflating each of the original photographs into three super-layered panels.
In Khan's work, the Bechers' photographs take on a ghostly quality, resembling chalk drawings. Like a spectre, the vestiges of a now defunct industrial infrastructure, which once exemplified the advances of modern engineering, re-emerge; the cool act of appropriation becoming a poignant reflection on authorship and time. It is the idea of a disappearing architectural language that Khan so poignantly takes up in his work. He conveys a sense of time depicted in motion, bringing the Becher's buildings back from the past, compressing the timeline of repetition from their numerous shots into indivisible moments encoded in the composition.