Nir Hod, *100 Years is Not Enough,* 2025, oil, chrome and patina on canvas, 72 x 90 inches

Michael Kohn Gallery is extremely proud to announce Dorian’s Gardens, an exhibition by New York-based artist Nir Hod. In his nearly 30-year career, Hod has consistently delved into the duality of human nature as subject matter for his paintings. The dichotomous themes of beauty and death, cycles of flourish and decay, vanity, perfection, destruction, and the overall fragility of life permeate from his earliest bodies of work, such as the Genius and Mother portraits, to his most recent, reflective minimal canvases of the series 100 Years is Not Enough. The ongoing study of various bodies of water is rendered by Hod’s loose yet seductive impressionistic style and iconic chroming, mirror-like technique.

100 Years…, consists of emotive gestural interpretations of flora floating over bodies of water. Partially idealized, they are not exact renditions of nature but impressions that hover between natural and representational beauty. Hod’s scattered mark-making is complemented by the illusion of shimmering water achieved by multiple applications of reflective metallic chrome. Each composition appears to create a singular ecosystem, a simulacrum of the natural world. Upon close inspection, the spectator finds their own likeness reflected in a painterly surface reminiscent of reality, a visual metaphor of vanity, illusion, and the human condition.

Appropriately titled after Oscar Wilde’s seminal novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Hod’s new exhibition, Dorian’s Gardens, is visually exquisite but, like Dorian Gray’s portrait, the paintings ultimately betray their true nature through rough gestures, ghostly traces of color, and a myriad of painterly “mistakes” that proudly reveal beauty and decay as one. Together Hod’s group of lustrous, pastoral landscapes reimagine aesthetic perfection through a lush orchestration of exotic flowers, velvet petals slick with dew, manicured hedges, and sun-dappled pathways veiled in haze. Though, laying beneath the surface is an eerily quiet unrest– Hod’s symbolic reaping of the garden’s vitality. In the artist’s interpretation, Dorian’s Gardens is a suspension of transient bloom, a state of longing, of vanished innocence, and hidden truths. A florid world where splendor conceals grief, and perfection is a carefully painted mask.

Equally present in Dorian’s Gardens is Hod’s affinity for art history. A palatial ambiance that recalls Old Masters is achieved through color palettes of deep turquoises, jewel-toned reds, and purples melded with black and brown tones. The relaxed brushwork of Life as a Memory, a portrait of a couple taking a stroll, is a melancholic recall of poems and letters of loneliness. While Hod’s newest figurative sculpture, Lonely girl with tiger– evocative of the allegoric bronzes from the Renaissance–carries themes of desire.

Dorian’s Gardens opens October 11, 2025, and will be on view through January 2026.

Painting All Together (Painting as Is IV) Curated by Heidi Hahn and Tim Wilson
August 16 – October 1, 2025

Gallery 1 & 2

Sharon Ellis, Recent Paintings
June 14 - August 9, 2025

Gallery 1

40th Anniversary Exhibition
February 19 - April 10, 2025

Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Shiwen Wang
The river returns nothing of what it takes
October 26 – December 21, 2024

Gallery 1 & 2

Heidi Hahn,
NOT YOUR WOMAN
April 25 – June 11, 2025

Gallery 1 & 2

Hadi Alijani, The Mutilated Gaze
November 9 – December 21, 2024

Gallery 3

Lita Albuquerque, Earth Skin

September 12 - October 19, 2024
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Chiffon Thomas, Progeny

June 20 - August 17, 2024
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

William Brickel, Was It Ever Fair.

January 20 - March 2, 2024
Gallery 1 & 2

Rosa Loy, Glade

March 9 - April 20, 2024
Gallery 1 & 2

Siji Krishnan, Liminal Spaces

April 26 - June 8, 2024
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Li Hei Di, Oscillating Womb

November 2, 2023 - January 6, 2024
Gallery 1 & 2

Faris Heizer, These days

November 2, 2023 - January 6, 2024
Gallery 3

COMPOSITION

September 15 - October 21, 2023
Gallery 1 & 2

Ed Moses, Edges, Magmas and Waterfalls

September 18 - October 30, 2021
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

101 Years of Still Life: 1920-Present

August 7 - September 11, 2021
Gallery 1 & 2

Joe Goode, 20 Years Later

June 18 - August 7, 2021
Gallery 3

William Brickel, I’d Tell You If I Could

June 11 - July 31, 2021
Gallery 1 & 2

Chiffon Thomas, Antithesis

April 9 - May 21, 2021
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Jellyfish, Curated by Samantha Glaser-Weiss

January 31 - March 13, 2020
Gallery 1 & 2

Octavio Abúndez, Facts, contradictions, puzzles…

November 9, 2019 - January 16, 2020
Gallery 1 & 2

Enrique Martínez Celaya, The Tears of Things

September 13 - November 1, 2019
Gallery 1 & 2

María Berrío, A Cloud’s Roots

June 1 - August 30, 2019
Gallery 1 & 2

Heidi Hahn, Burn Out in Shredded Heaven

April 6 - May 23, 2019
Gallery 1

Jarvis Boyland, On Hold:

April 6 - May 23, 2019
Gallery 2

Gonzalo Lebrija, Veladuras Nocturnas

January 19 - March 23, 2019
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Rosa Loy, So Near And Yet So Far

November 9, 2018 - January 9, 2019
Gallery 1 & 2

Tony Berlant, Fast Forward

September 22 - November 3, 2019
Gallery 1 & 2

Jess, Secret Compartments

July 21 - September 7, 2019
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Sheets

June 1 - July 14, 2018
Gallery 1 & 2

Mark Innerst, New Paintings

April 6 - May 24, 2018
Gallery 1 & 2

Gesture | Form | Pop | Process

February 27 - March 29, 2018
Gallery 1 & 2

Engender

November 11, 2017 - January 27, 2018
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Chingaderas Sofisticadas

September 16 - November 4, 2017
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Dennis Hopper, The Lost Album

July 8 - September 1, 2017
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Dean Byington, Theory of Machines

May 19 - June 30, 2017
Gallery 1 & 2

Joe Goode, Old Ideas with New Solutions

March 23 - May 13, 2017
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Bruce Conner, LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS

February 9 - March 15, 2017
Gallery 1

Bruce Conner, A MOVIE

November 11, 2016 - February 8, 2017
Gallery 1

John Altoon, Works from the Estate

September 16 - October 29, 2016
Gallery 1 & 2

Ori Gersht, Floating World

July 9 - September 10, 2016
Gallery 1 & 2

Wallace Berman, American Aleph

May 6 - June 25, 2016
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Ryan McGinness, #metadata

March 19 - April 15, 2016
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Dean Levin, XTC

January 16 - February 27, 2016
Gallery 2 & 3

Lita Albuquerque, Embodiment

January 9 - February 27, 2016
Gallery 1

Simmons & Burke, Dutch Masters

November 6 - December 19, 2015
Gallery 1

Object/Space: Robert Ryman + Giorgio Morandi

September 19 - October 31, 2015
Gallery 1

The West Coast Avant-Garde, 1950 - Present

July 18 - September 4, 2015
Gallery 1 & 2

Jess’s Didactic Nickelodeon

June 6 - July 10, 2015
Gallery 3

William Monk, The Cloud is Growing in the Trees

May 29 - July 10, 2015
Gallery 1 & 2

Camille Rose Garcia, Mirror, Black Mirror

April 25 - May 20, 2015
Gallery 3

Tom LaDuke, Candles and Lasers

April 11 - May 20, 2015
Gallery 1 & 2

LAND, AIR, SEE

February 21 - April 2, 2015
Gallery 1 & 2

Troika, Cartography of Control

January 10 - February 12, 2015
Gallery 1 & 2

Eddie Martinez, Nomader

September 12 - October 25, 2014
Gallery 1 & 2

Lita Albuquerque, Light Carries Information

November 15 - December 20, 2014
Gallery 2

Joe Goode, Flat Screen Nature

July 12 - August 29, 2014
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Bruce Conner, CROSSROADS

November 8 - December 20, 2014
Gallery 1 & 3

Mark Ryden, The Gay 90s West

May 3 - June 28, 2014
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Painting All Together (Painting as Is IV) Curated by Heidi Hahn and Tim WilsonAugust 16 – October 1, 2025Gallery 1 & 2

Sharon Ellis, Recent PaintingsJune 14 - August 9, 2025Gallery 1

40th Anniversary ExhibitionFebruary 19 - April 10, 2025