In the last few years, a number of major Los Angeles art galleries relocated to new, larger and more ambitiously designed spaces. A couple of weeks ago, Michael Kohn Gallery opened the doors of its impressive new space on Highland Avenue. Its large main gallery, with its skylights and 22-foot ceiling, has the gravitas of a museum space. The new space was inaugurated with an exhibition by well known LA artist Mark Ryden, who has a following not only among serious art collectors, but among young, hip crowds as well.
Read MoreLeonardo DiCaprio is an ardent collector of his macabre paintings. Katy Perry refers to his imagery in Twitter posts, and Amanda Seyfried has practically begged to be his muse. (“I’d love for him to paint a caricature of me with blood trickling down my throat and me holding a dead cat,” she told W magazine.) That gown of raw meat that Lady Gaga donned on MTV a few years ago? Derived from one of his best-known works.
Read MoreIt wasn't supposed to be this way. It was all supposed to happen on November 11, 2011, just a quiet continuation of Mark Ryden's already blockbuster The Gay 90's Olde Tyme Art Show that showed in NYC at Paul Kasmin in Spring 2010. Mark was scheduled to work on a few new additions for the West Coast audience at Michael Kohn Gallery, have this one opening, then move on to another body of paintings slated for the future.
Read MoreArtist Mark Ryden -- the man behind Tyler, The Creator's "Wolf" album artwork -- recruited the Odd Future ringleader and a handful of other artists to produce covers of Harry Dacre's 1892 popular song, "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)." Katy Perry, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh, Metallica's Kirk Hammett and long-time Tim Burton composer Danny Elfman each provided their own unique take on the tune, appearing on the LP "The Gay Nineties Old Tyme Music: Daisy Bell."
Read MoreMark Ryden wasn’t made for this time. His paintings, which depict a sumptuous surrealism more common in various points of history, play out like Vermeer on an absinthe trip, with the irreverent 1960s freakout humor of Robert Crumb thrown in for good measure. Populated with po-faced pale young girls, meat of every cut, Abraham Lincoln, and the occasional pop star, Ryden’s new set of paintings, “The Gay ’90s,” addresses the artist’s complex relationship to the past.
Read MoreLast Saturday afternoon, for six hours straight, a steady stream of art enthusiasts showed up for the much-anticipated opening of Mark Ryden's new exhibition The Gay 90s: West, currently on view at the Kohn Gallery's expansive new space located on Highland in the heart of Hollywood.
Read MoreMark Ryden spent two years on the Memory Lane diorama in "The Gay 90's: West," his
second Kohn Gallery exhibition and the first show at the gallery's new Hollywood space.
A dense collection of found, altered objects and painted miniatures all set behind glass
inside a hand-carved, 9-foot-long carriage, the diorama looks like a pastel-colored cross
between that HBO drama Deadwood and a 1940s variety show.
Read MoreThe beloved album artist Mark Ryden recently came out of a long retirement from making LP covers to work on a special edition of Tyler the Creator's "Wolf."
Now he's gotten the L.A. rapper-producer and many other stars to return the favor for a new project.
Read MoreIt may have been 90 degrees last night but that didn't stop Leo from weighing in on Mark Ryden's latest foray into the past "The Gay 90's West."
There's not one person I know who hasn't said at one time or another, "I wish I lived in another time." Mark Ryden decided long ago not to just yearn for it, but live it, in his own artistic way.
Read MoreMichael Kohn is a busy man. For the past year, the onetime art critic and magazine editor whose Kohn Gallery has been a mainstay on the Los Angeles art scene since the ‘80s has been prepping for the opening of his new and improved space. After 14 years at the corner of Beverly and Crescent Heights, he decamped for a larger venue on Highland near Beverly.
Read MoreThe painter Mark Ryden made his name creating distinctive, cartoonish record sleeve art, most notably for Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” album, Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” single, and records by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tyler the Creator.
Read MoreLos Angeles-based artist Mark Ryden expands his singular melding of high and low art, cerebral meditation and pop-culture camp with "The Gay 90s: West," a new exhibition at the Kohn Gallery in L.A. that's a continuation of "The Gay 90s: Olde Tyme Art Show," which took place at New York's Kasmin Gallery in 2010.
Read MorePop Art painter Mark Ryden's new show "The Gay 90s" opening Saturday, May 3 at the Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, features plenty of weird cameos from Abraham Lincoln, strange phantasmagoric scenes with raw meat, and his signature oval-eyed little girls. One of the little girls, a smaller painting in the back of the gallery, depicts Katy Perry.
Read MoreIn the inaugural exhibition Mark 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 MoreThe 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 More
