Lemon Blue

Barry Kahn was a conceptual artist, art critic, writer, and exhibition organizer. Much of his brief career was spent in Minneapolis. He played a seminal role in the establishment of the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. He was an articulate and passionate spokesman for artists seeking better public exposure, and he was selected as the first coordinator of the MAEP program.

This delicate abstract screenprint typifies Kahn’s conceptualized exploration of rule-based art. What at first appears to be a simple grid is an engaging assortment of patterns within patterns that of break the regularity of the grid. The buildup of the image is also quite subtle, and closer inspection reveals a dizzying array of dots not unlike paintings by Georges Seurat.