The Armory Show, September 5 - 8, 2024

Michael Kohn Gallery is excited to propose a presentation of its collective of emerging and established artists. This showcase highlights a diverse employment of materials, relationship to subject matter, and skillful ideological expressions.  

Heidi Hahn’s monumental portraits of women investigate bodily autonomy and interiority. Similarly, William Brickel’s emotionally distant male figures wrap around each other in a double helix of exaggerated forms borne of painterly restraint. Jinbin Chen’s delicate color palettes create environments which traverse a terrain of liminal gender. In contrast, Li Hei Di’s otherworldly canvases capture the transient elements of sexual impulse.

Siji Krishnan’s meticulously layered rice paper paintings explode the boundaries of material possibility with playful renderings of memory and belonging related to her upbringing in Southern India. Hadi Alijani’s fantastical works synthesize Persian iconography through an ironic, quotidian lens. In relation, Ilana Savdie’s electrifying, hot-colored surreal compositions question interstitialities of migration, foreignness, and familiarity.

Rosa Loy’s casein compositions strike a balance between the unheimlich and the humorous. Kate Barbee’s paintings combine impermanence with a Cubist sensibility where her subjects pull away from the constraints of figuration and park themselves firmly in mesmerizing abstraction. Nir Hod’s chromed, reflective canvases collapse distinctions between viewers’ expectations and the reality of the painting surface. 

Beyond painting, Chiffon Thomas’s figurative assemblages interpret feelings of nostalgia, metamorphosis, and decay through his lens as a trans and queer artist raised within a strong religious environment. Alicia Adamerovich’s union of carpentry and surrealism fearlessly explore a subconscious landscape filled with radiant orbs and spiraling appendages.

Rounding out the presentation, Faris Heizer incorporates corporeal gesture, light, and perspective to narrate stories embedded in domesticity. Concerned with the limits of representation, Shiwen Wang shores themes of genesis and catastrophe in her insistently textural and ambiguously formed paintings.

The Armory Show would be the ideal setting to present the works of these masterful artists in a wider conversation with their peers and predecessors.

EXPO Chicago, April 11 - 14, 2024

Michael Kohn Gallery is delighted to announce three solo presentations of paintings by artists Lita Albuquerque, Nir Hod, and Mark Innerst at Expo Chicago 2024.

Inspired by nature and Earth’s place in the grander universe, Light and Space artist Lita Albuquerque’s (b. 1946) body of work interweaves photography, film, performance, painting, and sculpture into a vibrant synthesis of personal and cosmic mythologies. In her presentation at Expo Chicago, Albuquerque revisits her celebrated Auric Field series. In several new canvases varying in scale, hypnotizing golden orbs are set against a minimal background of dark blue pigment. “I started using blue as a way of uniting earth and sky,” says Albuquerque. “From the beginning of my practice, the color blue was also inspired by the color of the Mediterranean where I grew up, and the deep history of cosmology of that region. Since then, using the color blue has been a fascination. To quote Goethe: ‘We love to contemplate blue, not because it comes towards us, but because it draws us after it.’"

Nir Hod’s (b.1970) artistic practice draws upon personal memory and traumatic historical events to elicit subtle tensions between the viewer’s expectations and the material reality of the painting surface. In his most recent series, 100 Years Is Not Enough, Hod appropriates and synthesizes Claude Monet’s water lily iconography into dream-like interpretations of flora and various bodies of water. These new works present a masterful play between the profoundly illusionistic depth of the chromed, mirror-like surface. The viewer and their surroundings are reflected, and the physical substance of the painting, evidenced by the thick impastoed brushstrokes, evoke shimmering sunlight on water. The effect has an extraordinary impact precisely because of the two competing, yet completely compatible, major shifts in painterly perspective.

Mark Innerst (b. 1957) broke into the New York art scene in the early 1980s as part of the Pictures Generation of artists who employed widely varied images as source material culled from the expanding media of the pre-digital age. His small-scale oils on canvas in hand-made frames showcase a continuous conceptual investigation into thematic genres of traditional painting. Towering buildings of cityscapes are depicted as bejeweled giants which line the lonely canyon of an urban avenue. Elsewhere, Innerst produces his own version of a Dutch church interior with a blue-toned study of the grand lobby of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, replete with visitors filling the vast space.

Art Basel Miami Beach, December 4 - 8, 2024

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2024, Michael Kohn Gallery is delighted to present a focused exhibition of its historical roster that speaks to the gallery’s nearly four-decade presence in the Los Angeles contemporary art scene. In particular, this showcase weaves together key works from historical movements, such as Beat, Light and Space, Pop, and Minimalism, and contextualizes them within the grander contemporary atmosphere of the fair.

Representing the Gallery’s historical roster are internationally recognized West Coast artists. Lita Albuquerqueinterweaves photography, film, performance, painting, and sculpture into a vibrant synthesis of personal and cosmic mythologies. This year, Albuquerque presents a work from her notable Auric Field series which was included in the 2022 Venice Biennale and is in the largest scale to date. Martha Alf’s minimalist rolls of toilet paper “cylinders” stand monumental on a deftly painted stage. Bruce Conner will be represented by his found object, “trashy” assemblages, while Wallace Berman is represented by a group of his pioneering Verifax collages. As part of the Picture Generation, Mark Innerst’s cityscapes present a continuous conceptual investigation into thematic genres of traditional painting. Significantly visible in the booth is a selection of large-scale works by Joe Goode which range from his 1970s Torn Sky series to contemporary iterations of his iconic Milk Bottle paintings. A new addition to this year’s presentation is a minimal glass sculpture by Light and Space artist Larry Bell, which has not been seen publicly in decades.

Bringing the presentation into the 21st century are new works by established artists Heidi Hahn and Nir Hod. In her organic, form-forward portraits of women, Heidi Hahn portrays wavering expressions of the self in the arena of the public and private. The new work glances into Hahn’s newest series which will be shown in her upcoming solo exhibition with the gallery in Spring 2025. Nir Hod’s chromed, reflective canvases draw upon personal memory and traumatic historical events to elicit subtle tensions between the viewer’s expectations and the material reality of the paintings surface. Hod’s painterly prowess is complemented by his sculptural practice, with a 14-foot bronze candle that commands the booth.