Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to announce a cross-generational presentation illustrating the gallery’s forty-year dedication to West Coast artists and art history. Navigating through various stylistic periods, this showcase spotlights rare and iconic work from the Beat Generation, Minimalist, and Light and Space movements and epilogues with a look towards the gallery’s prospective curatorial vision.
The presentation begins with an installation representing the historical legacies of West Coast artists, Bruce Conner(1933-2008) and Wallace Berman (1926-1976): an assemblage of objects via Conner’s playful SWEET 16 CANDY BARRS, 2/13/1963, and Berman’s visually rhythmic assemblage of found media –a 56-part negative Verifax collage. The gallery will celebrate Wallace Berman’s 100th birthday with a centennial exhibition that opens in February 2026. The debut of this seminal work imparts the perspectives of two contemporaries responding to the chaos of post-World War II America.
Embodying the spirit of counterculture, the late Joe Goode (1933-2025) began his career in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Known for his depictions of everyday phenomena, most notably in his Cloud and Milk Bottle series, the presentation spotlights the conceptual 1978 painting, Drag Strip (Black Series) from his Black Painting series. The painting is sourced directly from the Estate’s archives and a signifier of the Light and Space movement. At the heart of the presentation pulses Lita Albuquerque’s newest Auric Field, which features a recessed golden disk embraced by a dense sea of ultramarine. Punctuating the historical narrative of the booth is California artist Martha Alf (1930-2019). In Black and Yellow, 1975, Alf ingeniously anthropomorphizes a toilet paper roll into a psychological study of human emotion and Minimalist form. Alf’s Cylinder paintings were included in the Whitney Biennial 1975: Contemporary American Art. Additional artists in the presentation include, Pictures Generation’s Mark Innerst, a rare painting by postwar minimalism pioneer, John McLaughlin (1898-1976), and a significantly important and intricately stunning work by Colombian artist María Berrío, El Cielo Tiene Jardines, 2013.
The booth concludes with a look at the gallery’s current roster with work by New York-based artists, Nir Hod, Alicia Adamerovich, and Heidi Hahn. In his notable 100 Years is Not Enough series, Hod captures the iridescent reflection of various bodies of water through his mirror-like, chromed canvases that are overlaid with impressionistic depictions of flora. Adamerovich’s painting, A repetitive noise, 2025, approaches materiality via a constructed pointillistic surface that generates the illusion of light appearing from dark spiraling forms and overlayed orbs. Meanwhile, Hahn’s large-scale work, NOT YOUR WOMAN #10, composes the human form through exaggerated limbs, expansive color fields, and gestural layers. Together, Hod, Adamerovich, and Hahn command painterly technique to propel contemporary conversations surrounding materiality forward.
In the spirit of the Michael Kohn Gallery’s 40th Anniversary, this year’s presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach bridges a focused survey of esteemed artists spanning half a century with contemporary peers and art history.
