Michael Kohn Gallery is proud to present It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), a highly significant exhibition of Verifax collaged works that commemorates the centennial of the birth, and the semicentennial of the death, of one of the most unique and influential artists to emerge from Los Angeles during the second half of the Twentieth Century, Wallace Berman.

Curated by the artist’s son, Tosh Berman, the exhibition opens on February 18, 2026—the day of Berman’s birth and untimely death in a vehicular accident.  In the new publication that accompanies the show, Tosh embarks on a personal account and iconographic decoding of Wallace Berman’s enigmatic oeuvre: “100 years ago.  Fifty years ago.  Born a century ago, gone for a half century…,” begins Tosh’s text; he proceeds with deliberate and detailed insights into Wallace Berman’s astonishing body of work. 

In 1963, Berman received a gift of a Verifax machine (a type of early Xerox machine that produced photographic images) that he utilized to invent his photo-based pieces.  Initially, the artist employed this expedient reproductive process to create modest, semi-abstract works that resembled a soupy mixture of cut-up photographs. By 1965, he had settled on a more standardized manner to re-present the world of photographic images.

While leafing through Life magazine, Berman came across a print advertisement for the hand-held Sony AM/FM transistor radio. He altered the ad by excising the geometric metallic speaker of the Sony, a magical voice that could emanate worldly knowledge from the ether, the oracle of the hand-held machine. Berman repurposed the visual center into an empty frame that could be populated with any image, from any source, from any location, of any subject, of any size; and he would repeat the process as often as he wanted. The juxtaposition of images and interpretations was countless.  The possibilities were infinite.

Wallace Berman’s Verifax works were rarely shown in public, a deliberate decision the artist made after his arrest in 1957 during his inaugural Ferus Gallery show. Instead, Berman directly contacted Los Angeles collectors whom he had met through the art world and sold just enough work to pay his monthly bills. In 1966, he was part of a group show at Robert Fraser Gallery, London, where he met the artist Peter Blake; Berman was subsequently included on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover by Blake.  He was an underground artist, yet Berman’s works are in numerous museums worldwide. Despite only a few gallery exhibitions in his lifetime, his life and work have influenced artists from Ed Ruscha to Richard Prince. The latter’s work was shown in the two-person exhibition "She: Images of Women by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince” at Michael Kohn Gallery in 2009.

This important exhibition brings together rare, large-scale 56-part works, along with stunning examples of 25-part, 16-part, 9-part, 4-part, and individual Verifaxes found in the artist’s studio after his death.  This is a critical, massive group of works that may never be shown together again.

By many accounts, Berman had the soul of a Surrealist poet, a Kabbalah mystic, and a pool hall hustler, but most importantly, that of an artist. Tosh Berman writes, “Wallace transformed the mass-produced into something intimate and enigmatic. By refusing the personal snapshot, he preserved the mystery, leaving room for poetry.”

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.

Nir Hod, Dorian’s Gardens
October 11, 2025 - January 31, 2026

Gallery 1, 2 & 3

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

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

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

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

Salomon Emquies, Complex Systems

July 22 - September 1, 2023
Gallery 3

Martha Alf, Opposites and Contradictions

June 24 - August 26, 2023
Gallery 1 & 2

Ricardo Cabret, Un Nuevo Manglar

May 6 - June 17, 2023
Gallery 1 & 2

Nir Hod, 100 Years Is Not Enough

March 18 - April 29, 2023
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Alicia Adamerovich, This is the time of the hour

January 28 - March 11, 2023
Gallery 1 & 2

Jinbin Chen, Returnees

November 5, 2022 - January 14, 2023
Gallery 3

Lita Albuquerque, Project Space

September 24 - October 29, 2022
Gallery 2

Lyrical Cool: A Tribute to Shirley Berman

July 16 - September 10, 2022
Gallery 1 & 2

REPORT: A FILM BY BRUCE CONNER

April 20 - June 18, 2022
Gallery 1

Heidi Hahn, Soft Joy

February 19 - April 16, 2022
Gallery 1 & 2

Ilana Savdie, Entrañadas

November 6, 2021 - February 3, 2022
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

Kate Barbee, Feral Flora

February 5 - March 25, 2021
Gallery 1 & 2

Caroline Kent, A Sudden Appearance of the Sun

November 13, 2020 - January 28, 2021
Gallery 1

Sophia Narrett, Soul Kiss

November 13, 2020 - January 28, 2021
Gallery 2

myselves, Curated by Joshua Friedman

September 11 - November 4, 2020
Gallery 1, 2 & 3

Nir Hod, The Life We Left Behind

July 16 - September 2, 2020
Gallery 1 & 2

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