Susan Sontag argues that "whatever goal is set for art, eventually proves restrictive, matched against the widest goals of consciousness." While Sontag famously defined art as a "form of consciousness," she also insists that "outgrown maps of consciousness are redrawn."
Read MoreToday, I want to talk about a few artists whose art made me stare, think, and wonder. I'm talking about artists whom I got the chance to meet in the last couple of weeks and ask some questions. And all of them are smart, eloquent, and courageous women. That's why I prefer to think about them as "Ladies Who Dare."
Read MoreAre you stuck in the Waiting Place but are not quite sure Flip the gender on Keith Gessen’s 2008 book, “All The Sad Young Literary Men,” and you’d end up with a suitable alt-title for the terrific group of paintings in this young artist’s first solo with the gallery.
Read MoreThe Norton Simon Museum presents Duchamp to Pop, an exhibition that examines Marcel Duchamp’s potent influence on Pop Art and its leading artists, among them Andy Warhol, Jim Dine and Ed Ruscha.
Read MoreFebruary 12, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Join Lita Albuquerque for an informal talk and walkthrough of 20/20: Accelerando
Read MoreThe works in Lita Albuquerque’s exhibition “Embodiment” continues her investigation of space, depth and perception. These new wall pieces are large-scale sculpture/paintings in which lush earth-toned raw pigments are juxtaposed with concave disks covered in gold or silver leaf.
Read MoreThere’s something you can’t quite put your finger on in German artistRosa Loy’s large format compositions of enigmatic female subjects. Like most artists associated with the New Leipzig School—including her husband Neo Rauch—Loy produces figurative works executed with an acute emphasis on technique. Her dedication to highly technical figuration aside, Loy’s works are nothing short of mystifying.
Read Morephotograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Dean Levin’s solo exhibition XTC at Kohn Gallery, the artist’s first in Los Angeles, presents a refined iteration of Levin’s ongoing investigation into space, perception, and architecture. At once conceptually utilizing and physically inhabiting the gallery space, the works on view offer discrete moments of architectural deconstruction and reconfiguration, prompting the viewer to objectively consider the space itself, while maintaining a subjective engagement with the resultant products of Levin’s investigatory gesture. Made up of three separate sculptural “vignettes” demarcated by discrete swaths of carpet on the gallery floor, the exhibition can be viewed as an experiential installation whose totality is more than the sum of its various formal parts.
“There was a point in my career in the fall of 1977 when I decided to give up painting as I had known it in order to go back to the history of painting, to its very beginning where the first artists were using the earth to draw upon its surface, as a need to understand it historically.”
Read MoreRosa Loy Die Andere
February 2 - March 26, 2016
Kunstraum Innsbruck
Longtime L.A. artist Lita Albuquerque’s new show at Kohn Gallery is simple and regal. Her “Embodiment” paintings hang inside, each with a shimmering gold, gridded, indented circle at its center.
Read MoreAlbuquerque is known for her performance art and recently gathered several hundred participants to create a "performative sculpture" titled Spine of the Earth 2012, for the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Performance. She received the Cairo Biennale Prize at the Sixth International Cairo Biennale. Her work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Trust, the Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, and MOCA, among others.
Read MoreIn 20/20: Accelerando, Albuquerque merges film, sound and performance to tell the story of a 25th century female astronaut who lands on Earth in the year 6,000 BC with a mission to seed interstellar consciousness on the planet. Upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, she forgets her mission: “Where was I? And why was I awakening at this moment, on this planet?”
Read MoreWith a career spanning over 40 years, Lita Albuquerque is a seminal artistic force in her exploration of light and space. This new body of work - exclusive to Kohn Gallery - is a series of pigment paintings and salt installations. The exhibition continues her investigations into space, color, materials and the body.
Read MoreFor decades, the Los Angeles–based artist Lita Albuquerque has blurred distinctions between Land art and Light and Space on increasingly grander scales, whether it be building installations surrounding the pyramids in Egypt or placing sculptures across Antarctica to mirror the formation of the stars.
Read MoreThe Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announce a retrospective devoted to Bruce Conner, spanning his 50-year career. BRUCE CONNER: IT’S ALL TRUE is the artist’s first monographic museum exhibition in New York, the first large survey of his work in 16 years, and the first complete retrospective.
Read More"The fair is as busy if not busier than it's ever been," Los Angeles dealer Michael Kohn told artnet News via email. "There are more people, more admirers, a bigger market," he said. Among his sales, Kohn counted works by Lita Albuquerque, two works by Bruce Conner, one Wallace Berman and one Joe Goode, adding that these are "artists who are on their way to rediscovery" for their "historical California-based works."
Read MoreSimmons & Burke's newest works at Kohn throb with internal contradiction. Each of the eight huge prints dazzles and daunts. The artists, based in L.A., make their elaborate digital collages with surgical precision and sophistication, but the visual impact of what results has the blunt force of a hammer.
Read MoreFor centuries, elephants have played a prominent role in Indian society, culture and religion. These exotic mammals are entwined in the traditions of India—woven into the essence of everyday life. Alternately abused and revered, they have been drafted into war, harnessed to work in logging, decorated and paraded in Hindu festivals and worshipped for their connection to Ganesh, an important deity.
Read More30 0ct. 2015 - 6 Mar. 2016
Curated by Peter Weibel, the show focuses on the artistic application of new technologies and as such on the contemporary interlinking of art and science. Now with the beginning of the 21st century we can see that art and science are increasingly frequently working on shared topics that would remain hidden to the human eye were it not for novel tools. The exhibition opens up a new dimension of the future by showing how art and science converge through new technologies.
The show includes works by, among others, Yuri Ancarani, Camille Henrot, MVRDV & The Why Factory (in cooperation with MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho), Conrad Shawcross, Semiconductor, Troika.
