The macabre and kitsch meet in the work of Mark Ryden‘s new exhibit, The Gay Nineties West. The pop-surrealist artist will be the first talent exhibited at the brand new location of the 12,000 sq. ft Kohn Gallery space, which hosts its grand opening this Saturday. With the space’s inaugural exhibit, Ryden explores the theme of the “Gay ’90s,” a term coined during the roaring ’20s and harkening to the “simpler times” at the end of the 19th century.
Read MoreMark Ryden: The Gay 90s - West | Kohn Gallery announces the inaugural exhibition of its new, expansive 12,000-square foot space with new work by Los Angeles-based, Pop-Surrealist artist Mark Ryden. Ryden underscores his aesthetic forays into cultural kitsch through his exploration of the lost but not forgotten "Gay 90s." Employing the visual trappings of the formally idealized 1890s in America -- women dressed in satin skirts with large bows, large wheeled bicycles, Main St. USA, vaudevillian stages -- Ryden recreates scenes from this marginalized slice of pop culture.
Read MoreLos Angeles’s Kohn Gallery is moving to Highland Avenue in Hollywood. The new, 12,000-square-foot space, which boasts 22-foot high ceilings to better display large-scale works and exhibitions, opens May 3, 2014.
Read MoreLos Angeles's Kohn Gallery is doubling its footprint and moving to a new location in Hollywood, an area that proprietor Michael Kohn says is quickly developing.
Read MoreFans of Mark Ryden on the West Coast have been anxiously awaiting the postponed solo that they have been anticipating since the Los Angeles-based artist’s showing in New York in 2010 (covered).
Read MoreInfluential Pop Surrealist pioneer Mark Ryden has a solo show coming up on May 3 at Michael Kohn Gallery in LA. “The Gay 90s: West” is a continuation of Ryden’s Gay 90s series (the works on paper from which were recently featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 28).
Read MoreOne could argue that no contemporary topic has more urgency and complexity than that of the interaction between humans and the natural environment. Whether considering contemporary political policy or theories of geologic time, the question of how this moment in human history will come to terms with its existence in the larger world, literally and figuratively, is prominent across academic disciplines and various media discourses. Time, Space & Matter: Five Installations Exploring Natural Phenomena, curated by Betty Ann Brown at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, enters into this discussion, according to the introductory text for the exhibition, by “re-situating [sic] commenting on, and giving new form to environmental processes and the various histories of human interaction with them.”
Read MoreThe Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to announce its plans for a move to Highland Avenue in Hollywood and a new 10,000 square foot gallery, opening spring, 2014. The new building will provide an immense exhibition space with 22 foot ceilings, that will allow for impressive shows on a monumental scale.
Read MoreOne of two short films Bruce Conner made for Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts—itself a defining work of assemblage—MEA CULPA (1981) comes near the end of Conner's active filmmaking career.
Read MoreWERE YOU TO RUN into Mark Parker, Nike's NKE +0.09% CEO, on the company's pristine Beaverton, Oregon, campus, you might mistake him for one of the 21 PhDs who work in the athletic powerhouse's top-secret research lab.
Read MoreJoe Goode’s five-decade-strong oeuvre started in the ’60s with his now iconic milk bottle paintings securing him a place in the pantheon of pop art. Over the years, Goode has melded traditional and nontraditional media with a diversity of references that includes everything from his Midwestern roots to life in L.A., Atget, and classic English still lives. Reached over the phone in his L.A. studio following a photo shoot with Hedi Slimane, the youthful septuagenarian freely muses about gambling, the benefits of acrylic versus oil, and how long it took him to see through his own art.
Read MoreSimmons and Burke have mashed and montaged digital data for a half-dozen years, working like naturalists to comb the web for denatured specimens of media and pop culture. The prosaic glut of data at their (and our) disposal is both their subject and their raw material. They are maximalists, collecting, cataloguing and combining culled imagery in prints of dazzling slickness.
Read MoreLeonardo DiCaprio has become something of an auction fixture lately, attending major sales dressed in jeans and a baseball cap. Now, the star of "The Great Gatsby" has asked Christie's to help him pull off an auction of his own—to raise money for the environment.
Read MoreMysticism isn’t new to art, having prompted (among other things) the emergence of pure abstraction into the Modernist lexicon more than a century ago. At Michael Kohn Gallery, a group exhibition of about 30 paintings, sculptures, video, prints and mixed media works from the past 50 years by 14 artists shows that it’s alive and well today — albeit with a suitably altered consciousness.
Read MoreThe annual Armory Show in New York City is part museum, part gallery. With traditional and unconventional art on display from all over the world, it is a magnet for art lovers and art collectors. WSJ's Kelsey Hubbard was given a tour of the many unique works on site, from audio collages to video projections.
Read MoreFor "Pacific Standard Time," the Getty-organized, season-long initiative, museums throughout Southern California largely staged thematic overviews. Meanwhile, dozens of galleries have fleshed out the storyline with shows focusing on individual artists seminal to the period, often highlighting lesser-known aspects of their work. This show of Joe Goode's "Nighttime" (or "Black") series from 1977–78 was among the stellar examples. The charcoal powder drawings and oil paintings on both paper and canvas embody the most vigorous characteristics of Goode's 50-year oeuvre, and they hadn't been shown in two decades.
Read MoreFor Mark Ryden, nostalgia is more than a panacea, a gentle salve that soothes the raw edges of modern existence — it is the very lifeblood of art. When he sits down to paint, he is surrounded by a jumble of wonderful old toys, books and peculiar artifacts that whisper to him in their myriad voices, sparking distant memories and forging strange connections.
Read MoreOriginally taught by the legendary British pop artist Richard Hamilton, Ferry has, throughout his career, maintained his founding interest in art and visual culture. As one of the few musicians to be interviewed at length by the leading international journal of contemporary art, 'Frieze', Ferry has spoken of the very close relationship between his passion for fine art and his artistic ambitions as a singer, composer and performer.
Read MoreBeginning Thursday, October 20th, singer Bryan Ferry - yes, the dapper, suave and oh-so-elegant frontman of the British rock band Roxy Music - will showcase his photographic works at The Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.
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