Until a few years ago, painter Scott Kahn was living in his cousin’s attic, with a studio filled with work that he hadn’t had a lot of luck selling. Then, he began a chance correspondence with the late Canadian artist Matthew Wong, who related to Kahn’s own self-taught background and interest in magical realism. “Matthew was really a great champion of my work,” Kahn told Artnet News. “The only way I can explain it is that we were soulmates.” When Wong’s career took off in 2018, Kahn’s atmospheric, often surreal landscapes also found their audience.
Mostly working in oil on linen, Kahn creates scenes that glow beneath the bright moon or complement architectural elements seen through vignettes of trees and clouds. The works shown here were recently on view in the artist’s sweeping solo exhibition, Silent Night at David Zwirner.
We encounter nods to American regionalism, such as in “Berkshire Nightscape II” with its pronounced resemblance to Grant Wood’s bulbous, cultivated hills of rural Iowa. Other works invoke the realm of the unconscious, such “The Basement Window,” which recalls a recurring dream the artist has of his childhood home. Trees appear both inside and outside, blurring the boundary between architectural space and nature. In “The Stoop,” a mysterious, deep-forest darkness infringes upon the sunniness of front steps.
In “The Basement,” there is also a subtle connection to the interiority of the body in the trees’ vein-like branches and roots. Through structural apertures, such as a window or a balcony—including the paintings’ inherent frames—the surrounding environment is open to us but always limited. There is always a compelling edge, horizon, shadow, or disappearing path that prompts us to question whether we can truly comprehend what we see.
Kahn’s compositions often feel familiar, yet through deep contrasts, long shadows, nighttime scenes, and portal-like framing, he invokes a sense of enigma and liminality. The scenes are often stretched, as if seen through a wide-angle lens, and there is an indelible sense of transition, whether from night to day, sleeping to waking, or imagination to reality. “I don’t get too bogged down in what a landscape actually is,” Kahn says. “It’s more a vehicle to express a mood. That, to me, is the value of a landscape.”
See more on the artist’s Instagram.
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