Nicholas Kahn & Richard Selesnick

The Face Behind the Face

2014

Archival Pigment Print 10 x 10 inches, edition of 5 32 x 32 inches, edition of 5

44 x 44 inches Archival inkjet print

archival pigment print 24 x 24 inches unframed This contemporary, surrealist style photograph was printed by the artistic duo, Kahn & Selesnick, in 2010. The print is part of their 'Mar: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea' series which features deserted landscapes in outer space. In this image, a mysterious and otherworldly mechanism floats through the Martian landscape. It is unknown who or what is operating it. With this imagery, the artists entice an imaginative narrative where the viewer is left to conjure up their own story. About the series: "Mars: Adrift on the Hourglass Sea" is Kahn and Selesnick’s first project to feature a female protagonist; a woman finds herself alone in a wasteland that appears to be Mars. It is uncertain how she arrived in this place, via spacecraft, through a fold in the space-time continuum or perhaps the landscape is a mental projection. Either way, it is clear that she has escaped an unnamed catastrophe on Earth. In a series of hallucinatory episodes she simultaneously explores the planet and builds a mock-life for herself from a combination of high-tech and stone-age materials. Mars is revealed to have ruined artifacts and monuments from a previous, or perhaps future, civilization. The remains of massive stone listening devices are littered about the landscape, leading us to wonder: is this a colony that has collapsed and lost touch with earth? How did its occupants become stranded? Or are these the nocturnal imaginings of a post-apocalyptic survivor? About the artists: The ultimate storytellers, who have been showing with Carrie Haddad Gallery for more than 20 years, are Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick...

Signed, dated, titled and numbered on print recto. Signed, titled with artist's copyright stamp on mount verso.