Art In LA: Two Shows And An Auction: Nir Hod, R. Crumb, And The Collection Of Geri Brawerman
By Tom Teicholz
Nir Hod’s new exhibition at Michael Kohn Gallery, Dorian’s Garden (on view through January 2026), is stunning – in the main gallery room are several large shimmering canvases – flowers appear on the surface of what immediately calls to mind Monet’s paintings of water lilies. But as one looks closer, it is hard to situate the painting. Are they on a body of water? Is this a garden path where the light has been obscured? The closer one gets to the work, the more likely you are to catch your own reflection in the silvery surface. In another canvas, “100 Years Is Not Enough” one sees a ghostly reflection of a man standing there.
As one gazes deeply into the work, we realize that we are in the Bardo, the in-between state between death and rebirth. Hod has named this exhibition Dorian’s Garden with its specific reference to Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray. The exhibition materials lead with this quote from the novel: “The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.”
The press materials refence Hod’s use of an Old Masters palatial ambiance and color palette. I saw the flowers in the paintings more as a reference to French Romantics such as Fragonard. They seem at moments to appear casually across the canvas painted imperfectly, almost impulsively.
At a recent lecture I attended, Matthew Rolston spoke about the philosophical concept of “The Unity of Opposites,” which is a good way to describe these new works by Hod. The flowers look beautiful but they are dying. A canvas that seems to teem with life is all about decay. The now seems lost in the eternal; the present is constantly disappearing.