Miriam Cahn

This exhibition marks the first solo presentation of Miriam Cahn in London. Cahn's work emerged from a compelling physical experience instilled by the performative happenings of the 70s and is influenced by the feminist movement of the 1960s. First structured around performances, charcoal drawings and interventions in the street, her practice grew to include films, music, photography and the medium for which she is perhaps best known—painting. Cahn's paintings are uncommon and immediately recognisable: an extraordinary colorist, she uses vivid colors to represent ghostly silhouettes, faces and animals.

The exhibition opens with the room installation Schlafen (1997), comprising of thirteen paintings of lying figures of different sizes. The second room installation, RAUMICH räumlichich (2010–11) consists of ten portraits. The performative element of Miriam Cahn's work is just as prevalent as her own corporeality and its influence on the formation of her pieces. The body is not only the object of contemplation, but also the medium with which the artist's corporeal images are expressed. The third room, an installation made of various existing works, includes notebooks with drawings Cahn has never shown, alongside some of her latest paintings and photographs. Connecting the various media she works across—painting, drawing, performance, film, and photography—Cahn sets the works in correspondence with each other in the given space. By allocating her works into different series she has not only created a private index, dividing the paintings into cycles, but also demarcates direct positions, which—in the whole and especially when they are hung together—interact with each other as autonomous bodies of work.

Miriam Cahn (b. 1949, Switzerland) lives and works in Basel and Bergell, Switzerland. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in European museums and she was included in Documenta 7 in 1982 and represented Switzerland at the 41st Venice Biennial in 1984.

The exhibition is supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

Miriam Cahn
Kurator: Vincent Honore