The silver canvases that are pure gold

Buffalo born Jacob Kassay’s ‘pictureless’ metallic canvases possess an understated cool. Recently the subject of an extensive New Yorker profile, his Untitled paintings have been causing a stir on both sides of the Atlantic over the last year and are soon to grace the upper galleries of London’s ICA in the artist’s first solo show in a public gallery (October 12 – November 13).

He’s been working on his Untitled series since 2005, made by painting each canvas with a layer of acrylic paint (to seal the surface) before it is plunged into a vat of electrolyte and then coated in a layer of silver just ‘atoms thick'.

Empty canvases of course, while still considered somewhat avant-garde, aren’t new to the art world. Kassay's monochrome works follow in the footsteps of art-legends such as Yves Klein and Robert Rymans, whose Ledger (1982) is a near featureless white canvas.

The metallic finish and colourlessness of Kassay’s pieces give them the austerity of minimalist works from the 1960’s like Robert Morris's Mirrored Cubes. Kassay's paintings, minimalist sculpture and 'blank' canvases all hold in common a focus on the form of the art itself. Rather than trying to represent or depict a real object, the emphasis is on the subtle variations on the surface of the canvas, the weave of the linen, the way paint is applied or the imperfections in the metal and the way the art work changes the gallery space around it.

In keeping with the buzz around the aritst's work, the show will open with a performance by the American minimalist musician Rhys Chatham.

If you want to check out more of Kassay’s work he's featured in Phaidon’s new Vitamin P2 which gives an overview of the best contemporary painting in the world today.