Deliberate machine-wrought wood sculp­tures whose laminations and doweling reveal Kahn’s intention to design both close-up and perspective encounters with his constructions. This attention to detail expresses itself visually rather than tactiley for the rough finished hulks do not invite caressing. A vora­cious maw is the major shape which can swell into an archway or contract into a tooth. Triangular and slab ele­ments establish angles of direction which are buttressed by bevelled scoops or intersected by pivoting fillets and cubes. Kahn’s work has a curiously modular effect, implying a joiner’s un­derstanding of Attic Greek mouldings and the socketing constructions of the human anatomy. Highly rational struc­tural components, they are assembled in open state like a parboiled lobster claw rather than clammed into stasis. But often like the ruddy claw the pieces embody a feeling of useless tension, their dynamic possibilities having be­come overtaxed by ponderousness.

—Rosalind G. Wholden