Khan first gained attention for work in which he used digital technology to overlay and combine series of visual or textual work: every Bernd and Hilla Becher photograph of a gable-sided house, every page of the Quran, every late Constable painting, every stave of Chopin's Nocturnes. While photographic in nature, the resulting images possess characteristics more akin to drawing or painting and are presented as a kind of palimpsest, animated by the accumulative intervention of the artist's hand. 

Repetition and action have always been central to Khan's practice along with a restricted set of processes. However, while his earlier works drew on pre-existing cultural artefacts and were about creating a totality from discrete parts, his more recent series introduce another layer of mediation and are resolutely hand-made. 

Whether working with the still or moving photographic image, painting on canvas or directly on to the wall, Khan retains an aesthetic of elegant saturation. The density and precision of his images allude to the excess of information in the technical age, while encouraging a slower and more engaged way of looking and responding to our collective history and culture. He creates an expanded sense of time. 

About the artist

Born in Birmingham in 1978, Idris Khan completed his Master’s Degree at the Royal College of Art and lives and works in London. Idris Khan was appointed OBE for services to Art in the Queen’s Birthday 2017 Honours List.

Khan’s first career survey exhibition in the United States, Idris Khan: Repeat After Me, was held at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin, USA, in 2024. 

Further survey exhibitions include Idris Khan: A World Within, held at The New Art Gallery Walsall in 2017, with solo presentations of the artist’s work previously staged at national and international institutional venues including the British Museum, London, UK (2018); Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester (2016–2017 and 2012); Sadler’s Wells, London (2011); Gothenburg Konsthall, Sweden (2011); Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2010); Kunsthaus Murz, Mürzzuschlag, Austria (2010) and K20, Düsseldorf (2008). His work has also been included in group shows at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2020); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (2020); Royal Academy, London (2019, 2018); The Whitworth, Manchester (2019); Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (2018); New Art Gallery Walsall, UK (2017); Saatchi Gallery, London (2017); Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne (2016); National Gallery of Art, Washington (2015); Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2014–2015); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2014); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida (2013); The British Museum, London (2012); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (2012); Fundament Foundation, Tilburg (2011); Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); and Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin (2009).

A major public sculpture for London by Khan, commissioned by St George’s Plc with London Borough of Southwark as part of the development of One Blackfriars, was unveiled in autumn 2019. In 2016, Khan was commissioned to make a permanent public monument, forming the centrepiece of the new Memorial Park in Abu Dhabi, which was unveiled on the UAE Commemoration Day. In 2017, it received an American Architecture Prize, a World Architecture News Award and a German Design Award. Further commissions include a wall drawing commissioned by the British Museum in 2012 for its exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam. In addition, for the duration of the exhibition, Khan’s monumental floor installation, Seven Times, was installed in the museum’s Great Court. Also in 2012, The New York Times Magazine commissioned Khan to create a new body of work for its London issue. Focusing on the capital’s most iconic buildings and structures, Khan’s image of the London Eye featured on the cover. Created in 2018 for The Albukhary Foundation Islamic Gallery, Khan's 21 Stones was the British Museum's first site-specific artwork.

Khan has also worked on significant collaborations across art forms. In 2014 he worked with choreographer Wayne McGregor and composer Max Richter on Richter’s recomposition of The Four Seasons, producing sets for the production which premiered at Zurich Opera House. Lying in Wait, 2009, a collaboration by Khan and choreographer Sarah Warsop in association with Victoria Miro and Siobhan Davies Dance, is formed of layered movement that travels between three screens.