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In a small, untitled charcoal drawing from 1978, Lita Albuquerque envisions a hallucinatory desert landscape: A solitary mountain emerges from the horizon of an arid plain, bisected by a looming corridor of ultramarine pigment.
Read MoreEighteen years have passed since Bruce Conner’s death, in 2008, aged seventy-four; ten since MoMA held its massive Conner retrospective. The countercultural polymath, known equally for his ragged combines (described by Philip Leider in Artforum as “hideous in the extreme”) and his seductive film collages, has been canonized, if the label befits a true iconoclast, for a long time. A new show at the Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles—located in a former Masonic temple, and showcasing the private collection of the co-founders of Guess jeans—is the latest test of Conner’s caustic sensibility.
Read MoreThe Beat Generation is currently having a moment in Los Angeles. Although the timing is partly coincidental, Marc Selwyn Fine Arts is exhibiting works on paper by Jay DeFeo, Parker Gallery and The Box are presenting a major Wally Hedrick retrospective, and Michael Kohn Gallery is showing Verifax collages by Wallace Berman and drawings by Bruce Conner. Conner was something of a renaissance man in that he was proficient in several mediums.
Read More“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” marks the centennial of Wallace Berman’s birth. The exhibition focuses on the Los Angeles artist’s iconic Verifax works: collages he produced using an early photocopy machine gifted to him in 1963.
Read MoreNir Hod’s latest series, Dorian’s Gardens, on view in Los Angeles at Michael Kohn Gallery merges memory, nature, and art history into immersive, dreamlike landscapes. Across paintings and sculpture, Hod navigates the tension between beauty and decay, exploring themes of transformation, desire, and the passage of time. In this interview, he shares the inspirations, processes, and emotional frameworks behind his work, from reflective chrome surfaces to layered narratives and the quiet landscapes that have shaped his vision.
Read MoreNew York-based Nir Hod – who delves into the duality of human nature as subject matter for his paintings that are achieved through color palettes and relaxed brushwork, and has had solo exhibitions in the United States, as well as having been in numerous group exhibitions here and abroad – plumbs his own psychological depths only to discover what makes him love work and life.
Read MoreNir 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.
Read MoreSharon Ellis’s luminous interpretations of the natural world function simultaneously as cautionary tales and alluring invitations. Her compositions, marked by fluid lines and vivid, saturated hues, bear witness to a meticulous and meditative creative process.
Read More“The only relationship I have with the work is here, while I’m making it. That’s when I’m learning from it,” says artist Heidi Hahn, to whom markmaking is an individual, intimate form of protest.
Read MoreOpposing sexualized traditions of female portraiture privileging youth and beauty, the figures in Heidi Hahn’s paintings instead emphasize form and states of mind. These themes have permeated the artist’s work since her 2019 debut at this gallery. Her palette has become more refined, however, and her protagonists have gradually evolved from cartoonish to abstract—in fact, many portrayals here are so pared down as to seem practically nonobjective.
Read MoreIt’s both, Joe Goode’s art answered as the 1960s began — something surely material but purely visual. And something else besides, something curious and engaging that you haven’t ever seen before. In his strongest work, the Los Angeles-based artist — who died of natural causes in his sleep on March 22, a day before his 88th birthday — held the image and the object in eccentric equipoise. The result is an uncanny sense of vivid presence.
Read MorePioneering Land Art and Light & Space artist Lita Albuquerque, known for her work in the 1960s and ’70s, presents Turbulence, featuring a boulder coated in ultramarine blue atop decomposed granite. The piece reflects on the fleeting connection between humanity and nature, with blue serving as a link between earth and cosmos, transforming light into matter.
Read MoreEveryone loves a party, and Michael Kohn Gallery’s 40th Anniversary Exhibition is no exception. Since setting up shop at its original location on Robertson Boulevard in 1985, the cutting-edge contemporary art gallery has showcased works by artists like Richard Tuttle, Dennis Hopper, Joe Goode, Alex Katz, and Lita Albuquerque
Read MoreShiwen Wang finds inspiration right before nightfall, in twilight, a liminal time she sees as a moment of convergence between human and non-human life.
Read MoreOn the festive occasion of The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time (PST) project: “Art and Science Collide,” ever-inspired artist Lita Albuquerque debuts her fourth presentation with Michael Kohn Gallery.
Read MoreA matriarch of the Land Art movement that is closely associated with the American Southwest, Lita Albuquerque has engaged with the surface of Earth from the South Pole to Saudi Arabia, Peru to Paris.
Read MoreChiffon Thomas’s bronze, stained glass, and steel sculptures fuse the corporeal and the monumental, invoking forgotten legacies of labor, communal perseverance, and historical injustices.
Read MoreLike vivid flowers blooming out of damp soil and bright eyes emerging from dark wombs, German artist Rosa Loy has trekked deep through the trails of her own subconscious, lush with shaded verdure, and come to a restful pitstop within lichtung, a word she describes as “the place in the middle of a dark forest where the sun is shining.”
Read MoreMany of the near-identical subjects of William Brickel’s Was It Ever Fair. at Michael Kohn Gallery are looking down or away, as though they’ve just heard something that made them blush; their robust cheekbones are sometimes touched by a little red.
Read MoreWilliam Brickel’s elongated, sometimes contorted, often intense figures, possess an ambiguous beauty that are bluntly modern, nod to 16th-century mannerist styling, and offer a whiff of Paul Cadmus, Lucian Freud or even Egon Schiele. Mostly though they hold your eye with their strong and distinctive presence, crackling with feeling, pulling you in with their mysterious sets and clothes in colors fit for a Prada moodboard.
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