Sophie Kahn’s practice is of a fragmented aesthetic originating from a combination of contemporary and classic media - the digital and the analogue. Kahn joins 3D scanning and printing with traditional casting techniques and creates works that resemble de-constructed monuments hiding between the futuristic and antiquity. Her sculptures and 3D animations speak of the impossibility of ever capturing more than a trace of the past or a fraction of a living breathing body: the scanning technology deployed by Kahn is not designed to represent the human form, and hence, it can only generate fragmented results from the conflicting spatial coordinates it receives, resulting in a ‘3D motion blur’.

Synthetic Statues is a prime example of the artist’s work and illustrates her concern with death in the still image, highlighted by the interaction of new and old media and the collision of the human body with imaging technology. The fragmented bodies of Synthetic Statues are neither complete figuration nor total abstraction; neither entirely futuristic nor classical. The work engages questions of time, history, vision and the concept of the human body while being concerned with such questions as the instability of memory and representation.

Sophie Kahn lives and works in New York City.