Kohn Gallery presents an exhibition of the gallery’s roster of historic and emerging artists. This collection of works explores figurative and abstracted modes of representation through a striking command of materiality and the disruption of intertwining frameworks of culture, religion, class, gender, sexuality, and race.
Historical artists Lita Albuquerque, Martha Alf, Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, Sharon Ellis, and Joe Goode produced work that expanded the philosophical narratives of the West Coast art scene. Verifax collages and intricate ink drawings by Berman and Conner—central figures of the Beat Generation and countercultural movement—showcase their distinctive critiques of post-War America. Goode, Alf, and Ellis root the figural self-explorations of the contemporary program in the art historical continuum through their significant contributions to movements such as Pop Art, West Coast Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Eastern mysticism. Light and Space artist Lita Albuquerque’s unique visual and conceptual vocabulary draws a connection between the self, the Earth, and the cosmos through a multi-hyphenate practice. She will also be featured in a collateral exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
The contemporary work of Ilana Savdie, Heidi Hahn, Nir Hod, Sophia Narrett, Chiffon Thomas, Kate Barbee, William Brickel, Jarvis Boyland and Alicia Adamerovich investigate bodily autonomy through interwoven layers of identity. In her gestural and spectral paintings, Hahn portrays the shifting definitions of public and private self in the female form. Similarly, Brickel approaches the human figure as a means of interrogating the coexisting phenomena of the self and the other, a theme explored in his recent solo exhibition at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Boyland expands this concept further by examining the intersections of black male identity through intimate renderings of queer domestic spaces. Both Boyland and Brickel will have works on view at the ICA Miami concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach. As for Savdie and Hod, both invert traditional associations of figuration with their approach to composition–and perspectives–that are culturally influenced by their respective Colombian and Israeli histories; posing questions that consider migration, foreignness, and familiarity. Savdie’s electrifying, hot-colored surreal works use the body as a stage to explore themes of invasion, control, and defiance, while Hod’s chromed, reflective canvases collapse the distinction between object and subject. Savdie’s recent solo show at Kohn Gallery received substantial institutional support with major acquisitions by the Whitney, Hammer Museum, MFA Boston, MCA San Diego, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the RISD Museum.
Barbee, Narrett, and Thomas merge identity with process, synthesizing craft, sculpture, and weaving to excavate the fragility and emotionality of self through traditionally utilitarian materials. In the same vein, Alicia Adamerovich’s union of carpentry and surreal imagery expands on the picture space, traversing the psychological effects environments have on interpersonal relationships. Collectively, these contemporary artists have been exhibited and recently acquired by the esteemed permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hammer Museum, ICA Miami, Brooklyn Museum of Art, MFA Boston, High Museum of Art, and New Orleans Museum of Art, among others.
Kohn Gallery’s booth ultimately serves as a dialogue between past and present, figurative and abstract, and self and the other. This joint presentation will not only place these artists within the context of their contemporaries at Art Basel Miami Beach, but will also act as a conduit to the greater art historical orbit.
