Idris Khan
Layers hundreds of photographs, scores or pages into a single blurred, dense image.
Idris Khan was born in Birmingham in 1978 and studied at the Royal College of Art. His method, established while still a student, is accumulation: every page of the Quran, every Bernd and Hilla Becher water tower, every bar of a Beethoven sonata, every page of a Freud text, digitally superimposed into one image in which the individual layers cancel into a dense grey blur that is nevertheless legible as a subject. He later moved into painting with stamped and repeated text, blue oil-stick works, and large public sculpture including a memorial in Abu Dhabi. He was appointed OBE in 2017.
The photographic works exist in small editions, typically of three to six plus proofs, at specified sizes, and edition number, print date and size need establishing precisely — the same image at a different scale is a different work. Large-format prints of this kind are vulnerable to surface damage and to light, and face-mounted works cannot be repaired. The stamped paintings and oil-stick works on aluminium or canvas are unique and now lead the market. Works on paper and small editions are the accessible end.
If you own a work by Idris Khan
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.