KAHN + SELESNICK | Vision Under the Influence: Selections
from Truppe Fledermaus

Robischon Gallery is pleased to present the seventh solo exhibition of the collaborative duo Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick with an abridged reprisal of characters from “Madame Lulu’s Book of Fate.” For “Vision Under the Influence: Selections from Truppe Fledermaus,” Kahn + Selesnick’s theatrical characters animate their evolving and lively narrative with Tarot and augury drawings along with a large-scale painting of the central carnival character, Madame Lulu. As in previous visual chapters, the exhibition explores the imagined purposes and roles of magical, oftentimes mystical entertainers belonging to the company Truppe Fledermaus (Bat Troupe) within the artists’ overarching series “The Carnival at the End of the World.” Curiously timely, the troupe returns once more to reveal flashes of a collective future that seems increasingly uncertain and perilous.

With their eerily prescient themes, Kahn + Selesnick series have often predated world events, such as the financial crisis of 2008 which corresponded to the complications of devalued currency in the artists’ timely series “Eisbergfriestadt,”as well as the early environmental flood warnings of the series “Dreams of a Drowning World.” With the exhibition of characters from Truppe Fledermaus’ (Bat Troupe), “Madame Lulu’s Book of Fate,” some who return here, the duo’s visionary powers focused on the coronavirus pandemic, which at the time considered zoonotic sources like bats as the possible vector of contagion. The bat as subject has frequently appeared in their earlier work, often calling attention to the potentially species-eliminating white-nose bat fungus which the artists represent with deer antlers. “The Refugees” paintings allude to the plight of the fleeing who are prepared with paddles to face the rising waters – even as the owl-figure’s paddle smokes and flames in proximity to the water – a sign of climate calamity – while the blossomed Tulipman maintains calm with his platypus companion. In an expression and suggestion of the notion of fate, Madame Lulu’s Carnival at the End of the World tarot character costume drawings display inimitable Kahn + Selesnick twists on the emblematic cards of divinatory significance with loaves of pentacle-topped bread, scattered teacups splashing, or a balancing masked figure cranking a music box as destiny’s Wheel of Fortune.

As in all previous series also including “City of Salt,” “Scotlandfuturebog,” and the continuing saga of Truppe Fledermaus and its assortment of characters, Kahn + Selesnick adroitly layer their preposterous theatrically created worlds with both absurdist fantasy and inexplicably foresighted truths alike.

Kahn + Selesnick met at Washington University, St. Louis in the early 1980s where they both earned their BFA’s. Their work has earned broad international recognition and was honored with a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Green Leaf Award from the Nobel Peace Center, Oslo Norway and the Leopold Godowsky Award, Photographic Resource Center, among others. Kahn + Selesnick have held numerous artist residencies such as SURF - The Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, SD; Twenty Summers Artist Residency, Provincetown, MA; the Djerassi Artist Program, Woodside, CA and Toni Morrison’s Atelier Program at Princeton University, NJ. Their work has been on view in group presentations and more than eighty solo exhibitions worldwide. Exhibiting museums include the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; The Smithsonian, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Museum of Contemporary Photography and Field Museum, Chicago, IL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, MA. Their work has been added to various notable public, private, and corporate collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The National Portrait Gallery; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Estee Lauder; Microsoft and Time Magazine. Kahn + Selesnick received a commission for a photographic series by NASA and had five monographs published with Aperture and Candela Books.