Idris Khan

Drawing inspiration from the history of art and music as well as key philosophical and theological texts, Idris Khan investigates memory, creativity and the layering of experience. Khan's works – in media including sculpture, painting and photography – rely on a continuous process of creation and erasure, or the adding of new layers while retaining traces of what has gone before. He is celebrated for works in which techniques of layering are used to arrive at what might be considered the essence of an image, whereby something entirely new is created through repetition and superimposition.

While earlier works drew on pre-existing cultural artefacts and were about creating a totality from discrete parts, more recent series introduce another layer of mediation and are resolutely hand-made. Often taking many weeks to create, the results consist of many strands of text drawn from the artist's own writings in response to classic art historical, philosophical and religious tracts. These texts have profound resonance for the artist and describe his approach to creating work. However, for the viewer their full meaning is elusive. Khan suggests that our linear experience of time and place has a more shadowy relationship with memory and the subconscious, one that cannot be so easily grasped.

It is in this contemplative space that both the processes of Minimalist art and allusions to the role of repetition in the world’s major religions are brought into focus – as a vehicle for transcendence and a conduit of the sublime.

About the Artist

Born in Birmingham in 1978, Idris Khan completed his Master’s Degree at the Royal College of Art and lives and works in London.

He was appointed OBE for services to Art in the Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List. Khan’s first career survey exhibition in the United States, Idris Khan: Repeat After Me, was held at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA, in 2024.

Further survey exhibitions include Idris Khan: A World Within, held at The New Art Gallery Walsall in 2017, with solo presentations of the artist’s work previously staged at national and international institutional venues including the British Museum, London, UK (2018); Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester, UK (2016–17, 2012); Sadler’s Wells, London, UK (2011); Gothenburg Konsthall, Sweden (2011); Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada (2010); Kunsthaus Murz, Mürzzuschlag, Austria (2010) and K20, Düsseldorf, Germany (2008). His work has also been included in group shows at the Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London, UK (2023); Newlands House Gallery, Petworth, UK (2023); Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany (2021); Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2020); Royal Academy, London, UK (2019, 2018); The Whitworth, Manchester (2019); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2018); New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2017); Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2017); Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland (2016); National Gallery of Art, Washington, US (2015); Bass Museum of Art, Miami, US (2014–15); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2014); Jeu de Paume, Paris, France (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida, US (2013); The British Museum, London, UK (2012); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway (2012); Fundament Foundation, Tilburg, The Netherlands (2011); Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, US (2010); and Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany (2009).

A major public sculpture for London by Khan, commissioned by St George’s Plc with London Borough of Southwark as part of the development of One Blackfriars, was unveiled in autumn 2019. In 2016, Khan was commissioned to make a permanent public monument, forming the centrepiece of the new Memorial Park in Abu Dhabi, which was unveiled on the UAE Commemoration Day. In 2017, it received an American Architecture Prize, a World Architecture News Award and a German Design Award. Further commissions include a wall drawing commissioned by the British Museum in 2012 for its exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam. In addition, for the duration of the exhibition, Khan’s monumental floor installation, Seven Times, was installed in the museum’s Great Court. Also in 2012, The New York Times Magazine commissioned Khan to create a new body of work for its London issue. Focusing on the capital’s most iconic buildings and structures, Khan’s image of the London Eye featured on the cover. Created in 2018 for The Albukhary Foundation Islamic Gallery, Khan's 21 Stones was the British Museum's first site-specific artwork.

Khan has also worked on significant collaborations across art forms. In 2014 he worked with choreographer Wayne McGregor and composer Max Richter on Richter’s recomposition of The Four Seasons, producing sets for the production which premiered at Zurich Opera House. Lying in Wait, 2009, a collaboration by Khan and choreographer Sarah Warsop in association with Victoria Miro and Siobhan Davies Dance, is formed of layered movement that travels between three screens.