Kahn/Selesnick
Nicholas Kahn, born 1964, New York, NY, lives and works in Coxsackie and Brooklyn, NY
Richard Selesnick, born 1964, London, UK, lives and works in Truro, MA, and Brooklyn, NY
The New City of Salt, 2001, archival digital print, 3/5, Museum Purchase, 2004.16
Artists Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick work together creating fictional worlds, enigmatic places that are seemingly real, but come from the artists’ imaginations. The panoramic photograph The New City of Salt is a product of one such collaboration that accompanies narratives written by the artists and inspired by traditional Sufi tales, the writings of Italo Calvino, and the artists’ own existentialist parables. The stories and photographs explore an illusory desert land and chronicle the experiences of its diverse inhabitants. Poetic and perplexing, the staged scenes conjure up a mythical Middle Eastern civilization, set in an indeterminate past somewhere between pre-urban and postcolonial. The city’s architect, a mystical ruler, is rumored to wander the abandoned streets in a dream-like state. He is seen leaning against a conical building at the center of the image. The city looks monumental in scale but is actually a model, constructed out of salt-encrusted clay.
