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 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 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 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 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 More
