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At David Zwirner New York, Scott Kahn’s Landscapes Open Windows Onto Other Worlds

The self-taught artist draws on dreams, memory and close observation, with light serving as a vehicle for spiritual wonder, in a survey spanning work from 2000 to the present.

There is something deeply mystical, almost archetypal, about Scott Kahn’s paintings, which accounts for much of their charm. Their universal resonance with very different viewers lies in how they function as both visual metaphors and symbolic enactments of the eternal human quest to understand our place before the immensity of nature and the cosmos. In his landscapes, the human figure, when it appears at all, is reduced to a minimal presence, a witness immersed in the vastness of expansive natural scenes, often caught in transition, as if to symbolize the cyclical nature of existence within the essential continuum of transformation between sunrise and dusk, birth and death.

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This universally resonant symbolism helps explain the artist’s sudden market rise in his 70s, after years spent largely unrecognized. At a 2018 solo exhibition at Ober Gallery in Connecticut, Kahn’s paintings were priced between $5,000 and $12,000. Then his longtime friend Matthew Wong shared his work on Instagram, a strong endorsement that introduced Kahn to a new network of international collectors, including buyers in Asia, where Wong’s own market was particularly active. Kahn began showing with galleries including Nicelle Beauchene, Harper’s and Almine Rech, which brought him an even more international audience. By November 2021, he had set a new auction record approaching the million-dollar mark when Cadman Plaza (2002) sold for HK$7.51 million (about $963,000) at Phillips in Hong Kong. His auction record now stands at $1.43 million, set by Big House, Homage to America (2012) at Christie’s Hong Kong. Since David Zwirner announced its exclusive global representation, his works have been priced between $290,000 and $1 million on the primary market.

Following “Once in a Blue Moon,” at........

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