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A new exhibition of paintings by Kate Barbee abandons the precious sanctity of the canvas. In rosy paintings, figures swirl and mingle, limbs jut out at impossible angles. Just as her figures are deconstructed in a pseudo-Cubist style, her paintings too are cut apart and then stitched back together.
Read MoreEven as a child, Caroline Kent was immersed in the language of abstraction. The Chicago-based artist — whose large-scale black canvases evoke cosmic unknowns — grew up alongside her identical twin sister, Christine Leventhal, with whom she shared special methods of communication. Their conversations can still be so elliptical and condensed that they perplex others.
Read MoreSophia Narrett’s are not your typical tapestries. First of all, they’re not tapestries; the textile artist does not weave, but embroider, layering thread upon stitch to create shapes and shades that coalesce into a dazzling narrative. Secondly, there’s the subject matter—highly erotic vignettes that would make artisans of the historic Parisian tapestry house Gobelins clutch their pearls.
Read MoreART: Caroline Kent: A Sudden Appearance of the Sun and Sophia Narrett: Soul Kiss at Kohn Gallery. Interested in a reevaluation of abstract painting, Kent’s practice is founded on notions of language and textual translation.
Read MoreSophia Narrett was a painter before she began “drawing with thread,” as she told Hyperallergic. Dense with figurative detail, her embroidered bas-reliefs weave together not only fabrics but also various daydream-like narrative threads.
Read MoreOur identities are endlessly complicated — a strange mix of our own personal insecurities and ambitions, combined with the pressures of a society projecting its insecurities and ambitions onto us. Especially in a year with little distraction, we've been forced to sit with ourselves in months-long isolation, reflecting on who we are, what we've been and ways we can possibly adapt moving forward.
Read MoreAt Los Angeles’s Kohn Gallery, a group show titled Myselves comprises work by 25 different artists working in varying mediums. The show is emphatically diverse in this way, with work by painters like Loie Hollowell and Amoako Boafo on view with photography by Wolfgang Tillmans, alongside mixed media works by Chiffon Thomas and Jagdeep Raina. The show’s curator, Joshua Friedman, wanted to explore how different mediums can communicate ideas about racial, gender, and national identities, and how these come to be constructed.
Read Moremyselves is an opportunity to see and be seen by the artwork of emerging and mid-career artists as they probe into the architecture of identity. Featuring traditional painters, textile artists, mixed media artists, and photographers, Joshua Friedman has curated a broad foundation of unique makers to explore the shape-shifting theme of identity.
Read MoreHow does an artist shape and portray their identity? Curator Joshua Friedman explores the question in myselves, a group exhibition at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles until October 31. The group show features work from 25 contemporary artists, including Amoako Boafo, Heidi Hahn, Bruce Conner, Loie Hollowell, Jesse Mockrin, Xiuching Tsay, and Naotaka Hiro.
Read MoreOn view at Kohn Gallery is the first West Coast solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures by New York-based artist Nir Hod. Hod is known for creating works—from figuration to abstraction—that have a deeper, fundamental meaning. “By telling the truth through beauty you get away with many things,” says the artist.
Read MoreContemporary painting is usually characterized by the specific stylistic orientation of an artist; however, it is not that rare that one’s artistic practice is a mix of different formal and conceptual persuasions. Take for instance the Israeli born, New York-based artist Nir Hod, who manages to express himself through both figuration and abstraction.
Read MoreWith galleries slowly reopening across the Americas, especially in cities where the curve has been flattened, we took a look at the solo shows on view and found a number of exhibitions dealing with concepts of art-making in fresh and exciting ways.
Read MoreArtist Nir Hod has had his share of opening parties and solo shows, but his latest debut at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles offers an unveiling like none other. Opening on July 16 and running through the end of August by appointment only, the show entitled, “The Life We Left Behind,” pushes Hod’s work with chrome to new depths.
Read MoreCaroline Kent breaches borders, formally, conceptually, geographically. Interested in reevaluation of abstract painting, that sacred ivory tower of modernism, Kent’s practice is founded on notions of textual translation informed, in part, by time spent in Romania.
Read Moreohn Gallery didn’t aspire to plan a booth celebrating female and non-binary artists; the directors just selected work they were passionate about and ended up with a thoughtful, attractive presentation featuring no male artists at all.
Read MoreSeated atop a big anamorphous rock in AlUla, an ancient oasis in the Medina region of Saudi Arabia, is an electric blue sculpture of a woman seated in the meditative yogic position called “lotus.” Her legs are crossed while her hands extend out with her palms open on either knee. Her eyes are closed as she connects with the silence and nature that surrounds her.
Read MoreIn Facts, contradictions, puzzles, an explanation and a few lies, Guadalajara-based, mixed media artist Octavio Abúndez presents large brightly colored canvases covered with snippets of text culled from disparate sources. The centerpiece, Hi(stories): A Utopian History of Humanity (2019), a grid of 256 small canvases, is both an homage to Gerhard Richter‘s Color Charts and On Kawara’s Date Paintings while also a jumping off point for something completely different.
Read MoreHeidi Hahn‘s grandly scaled paintings lend iconic status to plain-Jane women going about quotidian routines. Breezily limned in free-flowing brushstrokes and translucent washes, her anonymous characters appear lost in dreamy, meditative worlds even as they shop, sweep, picnic and scroll through their smartphones.
Read MoreHeidi Hahn (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Hahn received her MFA from Yale University in 2014, and her BFA from Cooper Union in 2006. She is an acting Professor of Painting and Drawing at Alfred University, NY and has been the recipient of several awards, residencies, and fellowships, including the Jerome Foundation Grant; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Residency, Madison, ME; and the Fine Arts Work Center Residency, Provincetown, MA, among others.
Read MoreArt world insiders, collectors, and advisors packed into a crowded Armory Show VIP preview morning on Wednesday, milling about and perusing the nearly 200 booths set up by dealers from 33 countries for the fair’s 25th anniversary edition.
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