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Tobi Kahn is a painter and sculptor whose work has been shown in over 40 solo exhibitions and over 60 museum and groups shows since he was selected as one of nine artists to be included in the 1985 Guggenheim Museum exhibition, New Horizons in American Art. Works by Kahn are in major museum, corporate, and private collections.
A museum exhibition of over a decade of his work, Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses, curated by Peter Selz, traveled to eight museums from 1997 through 1999, including the Weatherspoon Art Gallery in Greensboro, North Carolina and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Dore Ashton, Michael Brenson, and Peter Selz wrote the essays for the catalogue of Metamorphoses (University of Washington Press). Kahn's work has received significant critical attention.
For thirty years, Kahn has been steadfast in the pursuit of his distinct vision and persistent in his commitment to the redemptive possibilities of art. In paint, stone, and bronze, he has explored the correspondence between the intimate and monumental. While his early works drew on the tradition of American Romantic landscape painting, his more recent pieces reflect his fascination with contemporary science, inspired by the micro-images of cell formations and satellite photography.
Kahn's belief in art's spiritual capacity is at odds with the contemporary emphasis on irony and displacement. As Peter Selz wrote: "His paintings and his sculptures, executed with consummate craftsmanship, are animated by a yearning for the transcendent...at a time when the concept of beauty has become anathematized in critical discourse and the perception of the spiritual remains marginalized in the discussions of the art world."
Nevertheless, the influence of his vision is growing steadily. Since Metamorphoses, he has had four additional traveling museum shows, Avoda: Objects of the Spirit, Correspondence, Sky and Water, and Paradisus.
In 1999, Kahn initiated the Avoda project, an educational program that accompanied the exhibition as it traveled for nine years throughout the United States. Led by Kahn, over 9,000 university students of all races and religions have made their own ceremonial art for both traditional and contemporary ritual in their lives. For many, the Avoda workshops were their first experience in seeing, creating, and understanding the visual world. Objects of the Spirit: Ritual and the Art of Tobi Kahn, a book about Kahn’s ceremonial art, was published in June 2004 by Hudson Hill Press and the Avoda Institute.
For twenty-five years, Kahn has been making miniature sacred spaces he calls "shrines." The first full-scale shrine, Shalev, is in New Harmony, Indiana, commissioned as an outdoor sculpture for Jane Owen and the Robert Lee Blaffer Trust.