Amman Khan - Thesis
It would be wrong to conclude Amman Khan’s Thesis to be about the material in any traditional sense. This continuation of minimalist found object sculpture caught in a trans-dimensional leap is a group of object oriented photographs which show a delicate attunement toward a magical reality where objects and their states of being tessellate. Documentary in nature, Amman’s work captures objects in relation to others and themselves, objects in reality warping transformations.
A square of highly processed lumber centered in a moss ridden and weathered field of the same material, their differences are obvious. The darker natural wood jumps between background and foreground, as if its precise and bleached counterpart is punching through its own past, only to be grounded once again in our minds through its cast shadow. Construction, human intervention on our world and the spiritual implications of effecting and shaping the clay of our Earth are laid bare and scrutinized under a microscope. The result is uncomfortable, but aesthetically sublime.
The strongest works in this group are those which tend to stray slightly from a strictly material play of transformation, and rather focus on the spiritual or even magical aspect of process. It’s in “music sheet” and “circuit board” where Amman is highlighting not the physical transformation of things, but our very understanding of transformation. Temporal and objective are paired with the abstract and musical, treating the objects in the photos as artifacts of human reason and thought—acting as a bridge to Amman’s conclusion: “prism” and “black hole”.
These are where the abilities of the camera are taken to its fullest extent by the artist in order to distort, but not to confuse, but rather to lay bare once again. Having the least to do with the material, human intervention or our understanding of the process, purely the intangible and spiritual aspects of change are exhibited through beautifully composed sermons, tastefully playing with religious iconography from colored streaming light akin to heavenly rays pouring in from cathedral windows to the intertwined foliage of its very walls. The viewer is forced to confront the existence of a higher being as we stare into the void, left questioning if our actions to this world are all part of a cosmic play or rather left to the forces of chaos and godless hedonism.