Exceptional Works: Scott Kahn

Rooted in his everyday life and experiences, the work of American artist Scott Kahn (b. 1946) blends real and surreal elements. A seasoned painter who had been exhibiting steadily since the 1970s, Kahn began to garner widespread attention in 2018, a period that coincided with his friendship with fellow artist Matthew Wong, who cited Kahn as an important influence on his work and helped increase public awareness of Kahn’s practice. Kahn has since been the subject of numerous solo presentations in both New York and Paris.

Kahn is the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants (1986 and 1995) and a residency at The Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, New York (1975–1977). His work is held in institutional collections including the He Art Museum (HEM), Foshan, China; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Long Museum, Shanghai; and the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas.

Featured on the occasion of the gallery’s presentation at Art Basel, 2024, Wolf Moon (2023) is a stunning example of Kahn’s enigmatic landscapes. Titled after the January full moon named for the howling of wolves in the dead of winter, the painting demonstrates Kahn’s use of a distinctive formal language to achieve nuanced and poetic renditions of the world around him.

The moon appears throughout Kahn's body of work, frequently in the background of his paintings, as a sort of omen for the scene laid out beneath it. The present work belongs to a group of canvases that focus on the full moon, with its myriad connotations, as the central compositional element.