Kohn Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of the gallery’s emerging and historic artists. In this collection of works artists elucidate on modes of representation using distorted, figurative depiction and conceptual abstraction that command materiality and intertwine with the artists’ respective practices.

The contemporary figural representations of – Heidi Hahn, Sophia Narrett, Kate Barbee, Ilana Savdie, Chiffon Thomas, and William Brickel – catalyze discussions considering topics on the self and bodily autonomy that are superimposed on multifaceted notions of identity. In her gestural and spectral paintings, Heidi Hahn portrays the female form to explore the shifting definitions of public and private self. Similarly, William Brickel approaches the human figure as means to examine the coexisting phenomena of the self and the other. Concepts of the other are translated in the work of Ilana Savdie through multi-colored paintings; mirages that relate to home, history, and heritage and employ the body as framework to discuss invasion, control, defiance, and the mediation of power. Barbee, Narrett, and Thomas connect identity to process in their studies of the self that synthesize craft, sculpture, and weaving to excavate uniqueness through traditionally utilitarian materials.

Historic artists Ed Moses, Joe Goode, and Martha Alf root the figural self-explorations of the contemporary program in the art historical continuum through their significant contributions to movements such as- Pop, Minimalism, West Coast Minimalism, and Eastern mysticism. The enigmatic paintings and drawings of Caroline Kent bring the dialogue on abstraction to the present with her own visual lexicon and geometric language.