Style As Form

With his vibrant fourth solo-show with the Chelsea gallery Friedman Benda, Misha Kahn, exuberant formalist, maker of sculptural furniture and furniture-as-sculpture, and creator of adorable masses at rest, seeks to “look into the essence of a material and help to style its ‘thingness’ to be apparent to humans” (per the project statement).

The term “thingness” is radically appropriate for the work on display; Kahn assembles things until their sum thingness overwhelms the constituent parts to become one thing, gooping and flopping and mashing together. Despite working across a multitude of materials—from glass and plastic to felt and bronze—he achieves an alluring evenness that prioritizes form above all. This is particularly apparent in pieces such as the sofa-esque Shapes for Potato, Potential, and Actual, made from fabric, foam, steel, and white bronze, and the could-be-a-side-table-if-it-had-to-be Digital Echinoderm (both 2022), made from painted plastic.

Although he is often slotted into a lineage stemming from Gaetano Pesce—an influential Italian goopster also re…