The Estate of Bruce Conner
Selected Films
Selected Works
Bruce Conner
Inkblots & Felt Tip Pen Drawings
February 18 - April 25, 2026
Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to present a concentrated selection of inkblot and felt-tip drawings by Bruce Conner. Created between the early 1960s through the 2000s, the collection of drawings examines a pivotal yet comparatively underrecognized aspect of Conner’s multimedia practice. The exhibition opens February 18, 2026, and will be on view concurrently with It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing): 100 Years of Wallace Berman.
While Bruce Conner (1933–2008) is widely celebrated for his contributions to assemblage, experimental film, and performance, drawing remained a critical and continuous site of investigation throughout his career. The meticulous inkblots presented in this exhibition—produced through folding and mirroring techniques—are an articulation of natural symmetry, insects, bird and fish shapes into what Conner described as a “linear freedom of movement.”
Presented alongside the airy, aqueous, and elemental inkblot drawings are early works on paper such as NEON NIGHT WITCHITA, KANSAS, 1963, which display fields of cross-hatching free from the constraints of formal tightening and reduction. Conner’s nuanced and repetitive lines draw space into and out of the second dimension and reflect a deep interest in automatism and the generative potential of material process. Informed by Surrealist strategies and the visual language of Rorschach tests, these works activate a space in which authorship is partially relinquished, and meaning remains perpetually unstable.
Markedly resonant with other 20th-century Post-War contemporaries like Brice Marden, Willem de Kooning and Lee Krasner, Conner’s works on paper constitute a uniquely striking gestural style. His high-quality corpus of work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including The Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Michael Kohn Gallery’s presentation will coincide with the Marciano Art Foundation’s presentation of seven iconic experimental films by Conner. Titled BRUCE CONNER/RECORDING ANGEL, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to consider the reciprocal relationship between his graphic and cinematic practices across Los Angeles. In dialogue, the respective presentations illuminate Conner’s ability to move fluidly between mediums while maintaining a conceptual framework rooted in fragmentation, rhythm, and temporal disjunction.
Exhibitions
Selected Press
