Idris Khan, Beyond the Black, Victoria Miro Gallery

Beyond the Black the latest solo exhibition of London-based artist Idris Khan is showing at the renowned Victoria Miro gallery. Khan is a favourite of the gallery, Beyond the Black being his third solo show. 

Born in Birmingham in 1978 to a Pakistani family and having graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004, Khan has established himself as an international artist, exhibiting his art in places like the Guggenheim in New York to the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The exhibition will be drawing in crowds as it features his new abstract large-scale black on black paintings.

Beyond the Black reflects an important shift in Khan’s artistic career. So far he has focused on photography and art that is created through a process of mediation with digital technology. In a similar style to the artist Gerhard Richter, Khan’s work revolves around processes of layering, erasing and repetition. Breaking away from these themes, his black paintings take on an intense and emotionally stirring spiritual experience, drawing him closer to the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko spring to mind.

As the name Beyond the Black suggests, Khan wants his viewers to see into his paintings, beyond the literal black surface and past the visual lens we all subconsciously use when observing art. Influenced by theories of history of art and philosophy, Khan’s body of work is far more theoretical and intellectual than most exhibitions put up around London today. The show will offer historical and artistic grounding as well as chance to be in aesthetic awe before his monumental paintings. Khan’s work demands a reciprocal relationship with his viewers, who will hopefully leave the exhibition feeling impacted by the vastness and seriousness of his works.

We recommend this show for anyone who wants to get absorbed into some art and for whoever has not visited the fabulous Victoria Miro gallery yet.