Visit Bridwell’s Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries
Exhibition open from September 12–December 16, 2022
LEAD STEALING THE DANSE MACABRE: CHANGING ROLES & IDENTITIES IN THE MODERN DANCE OF DEATH
Meet Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, the gallery’s featured artists at Bridwell’s Celebrating the Danse Macabre event.
Bridwell Library and SMU’s Department of Art History welcome the collaborative artist team Kahn & Selesnick to campus September 21–23 for a number of public events around the opening of Bridwell’s autumn 2022 exhibition, Lead Stealing the Danse Macabre: Changing Roles & Identities in the Modern Dance of Death.
- Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick will present on their collaborative process and the range of visionary artworks produced over the span of their career on Wednesday, September 21, 5:30-7:00 in Prothro Hall’s Great Hall (sponsored by the Department of Art History). RSVP Requested.
- Bridwell Library will host a hands-on show-and-tell with the artists, Thursday, September 22, 10:00 am—noon in the Benefactors Room. Space is limited. RSVP Required. **Only 20 seats available!
- Everyone is welcome to the official opening of Bridwell’s exhibition, Thursday, September 22, 5:30-7:00. We are thrilled to host Kahn & Selesnick as the featured speakers, addressing several of their recent works prominently featured in the exhibition. These include 100 Views of the Drowning World, Madam Lulu’s Book of Fate, Dr. Falke’s Oraculum, The Carnival at the End of the World, and four panoramic Danse Macabre photographs. This evening’s events will take place in Bridwell Library’s Blue Room, Gill Hall, and Elizabeth Perkins Prothro Galleries. Refreshments will be served. RSVP Requested.
Biography: Kahn & Selesnick
Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick are a collaborative artist team who have been working together since they met while attending art school at Washington University in St. Louis in the early 1980s. Both were born in 1964, in New York City and London respectively. They work primarily in the fields of photography and installation art, specializing in fictitious histories set in the past or future. These may include: documentary-style panoramic and square photographs that combine absurdist fantasy and bogus anthropology; elaborately crafted artifact, costumes and sculpture, often constructed of unlikely materials such as bread or fur, painting and drawings ranging from large scale works on plaster to pages of conceptual doodling. Kahn lives in Morlaix, Brittany, France, and Selesnick in Kingston NY.
Their current work features the recreation of the Truppe Fledermaus’s Memory Theatre of 1932 with its full complement of Batfolk, Greenmen, Rope-Slingers, and Death-Dancers in all their Carnivalesque glory. Kahn & Selesnick have participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide and have work in over 20 collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution. In addition, they have published 3 books with Aperture Press, Scotlandfuturebog, City of Salt, and Apollo Prophecies. Their most recent book, 100 Views of the Drowning World, is available now from Candela Books.
Read more on Kahn & Selesnick’s website.