Diary

Press Release

Nicelle Beauchene is pleased to present Diary, an exhibition of paintings by Scott Kahn at the gallery’s project space Third Floor. Comprising work made over the last three decades, Diary traces a spectrum of the artist’s feelings and experiences as rendered through visceral landscapes, dreamscapes, and portraiture.

Kahn approaches his subject matter with psychological verve, balancing obsessive detail with spare compositions that hook into the viewer. Smooth layers of bold color build quiet scenes of verdant foliage in a Floridian backyard, a New England winter sunset over bare trees and a pond, or a three-sided studio room floating in mid-air amidst a stormy sea and sky. Among these scenes, the artist continually grapples with his own movement between interior and exterior worlds.

Kahn’s distinct manner of realism is primarily self-taught. After leaving New York City in 1978 and shedding off learned approaches to abstraction, minimalism, and conceptual art, he stationed himself in Sag Harbor to begin painting from life, with a disciplined eye. His scenes hearken to American Regionalism, yet diverge into something more peculiar with their surreal and psychic representation of the artist’s surroundings.

Scott Kahn’s Diary captures moments in time—feathered rays of light, old friends, changes in the weather beyond a window—with a fluidity that illuminates the power of employing all of one’s self and senses to experience the motions of life. In his seeing, he urges us to feel. Diary marks Kahn’s first solo exhibition in New York in fifteen years.

Scott Kahn (b. Springfield, MA, lives and works in New York, NY) received a MFA from Rutgers University and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He has previously exhibited at Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery and the National Arts Club, New York; Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo; Holyoke Museum, Holyoke; and the Aldrich Contemporary, Ridgefield. He received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1986 and 1995.

Third Floor is open by appointment only. For further information, please contact gallery@nicellebeauchene.com.