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Part of his reluctance to admit that he might have accidentally become a painter may stem from a fear of criticism. He leads me through his studio, showing me a new series he's working on. Big black boards hang on the walls, covered in thick, swirling clouds of white paint. They're beautiful, abstract paintings, totally unlike anything he has done before. As you approach, you realize that the aggressive marks are in fact words-this is Khan's own poetry, scraped across a surface to the point of illegibility. But he can't leave them as paintings. Instead, he takes hundreds of pictures of each work as he's creating them, and stitches the images together to make a photographic print that's even more abstract than the originals. Pointing at the paintings, he says, "If I hang that in a gallery, you're questioning the surface, the oil, the history of it and all the references you get from actually looking at a painting." He gesticulates at a particularly stark canvas. "I don't want that baggage, it's not about that for me, that's why I wouldn't hang these as paintings." But what actually is the baggage of a painting? "If I do a series of white paintings, I'm automatically seen as an artist whose trying to be like, let's say, Robert Ryman. So you're immediately compared to that. Whereas if I make a white painting and I photograph that painting and I create a composition, suddenly I feel like it's mine." I ask him if he feels like he's just being defensive about it, scared of criticism. "I honestly don't think they're good enough." Silence fills the room. "I've got to stop thinking like that, and the moment I do, I'll be able to hang them."
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