In her vibrant embroidered works, Sophia Narrett paints with thread, deftly creating detailed figurative scenes tinged with fantasy, desire, and eroticism.
Her tapestries take center stage this month in “Soul Kiss,” the New York artist’s first solo show at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles. Her layered thread designs, almost Baroque in their complexity, present a fever dream of feminine sexuality, with women in ecstasy reveling in their freedom.
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Sophia 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.
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What does selfhood mean during times of extreme isolation? This is only one of the many thought-provoking questions that Myselves, opening on September 11th at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, might be able to answer. The group exhibition, curated by Joshua Friedman, features over twenty-five established and emerging contemporary artists who use their medium as a means to examine the various ways that our environment shapes our identity.
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How 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.
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With 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.
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Artist 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.
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As the world continues to watch numbers in hopes they come down or stay the same, two Chicago artists got to see their bank accounts go up in the amount of $10,000 thanks to winning the 2020 Chicago Artadia Awards. Sculptor/printmaker Eliza Myrie and abstract painter Caroline Kent received the unrestricted funds this week as part of the national nonprofit’s 11th award cycle. The national nonprofit gives money annually to visual artists (in any medium) living within Cook County for more than two years.
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I must admit, it has been difficult to make work about human connection and the many emotions that come with that, because I have been so isolated. Before all of this, it was easy to just fall into a strange hypnosis and paint my feverish memories or fantasies. The intimate connection that was once easily shared with others has turned inward. I have gone deeper into myself and have challenged my perspective to tap into the collective unconscious.
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Caroline 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.
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Desert X, a land art exhibition, first launched in 2017 in the Coachella Valley. It appeared again in 2019. Then its director, Neville Wakefield, announced a new location for 2020: Al Ula, a magnificent desert-scape and UNESCO World Heritage site in Saudi Arabia.
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Opening this Saturday, November 9th, 2019, Guadalajara-based artist Octavio Abúndez brings his conceptual works to Los Angeles for his first-ever solo exhibition. Courtesy of the Kohn Gallery, Abúndez’ show Facts, Contradictions, An Explanation, and a Few Lies will continue to explore the artist’s affinity for language, text, and the varying transmissions of Pop Culture across a remarkable 256 paintings.
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Los Angeles’s Kohn Gallery has added the Guadalajara, Mexico–based conceptual artist Octavio Abúndez to its roster. Abúndez, who was born in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1981, is known for works in a variety of media that address questions of borders, systems, and history.
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Wallace Berman had an almost shaman-like impact on people. Private to the point of paranoia, he avoided interviews or having his own photograph taken, though he repeatedly photographed his wife and son. In 1976, he was killed in a car crash with a drunk driver in Topanga on his 50th birthday.
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There’s something different about Jarvis Boyland’s work. Walking the exhibition rooms of Los Angeles’ Kohn Gallery — where Boyland’s “On Hold:” exhibit is on view through Thursday, May 23 — I was arrested by his portraits of Black queer men. Though simple and straightforward, there’s a complexity in the color story, particularly in his subject’s skin tones. They were rich and nuanced and complex, both imagined and realistic, and unlike any paintings I’ve come into contact with.
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Boyland’s most outstanding pieces focus on intimate portraits of queer, black men in the comfort of domestic settings, free from the prejudices which follow them throughout their life. Although relaxed, by deconstructing their anxieties, the men are inherently defiant in their abode. On Saturday, April 6th, Kohn Gallery opened On Hold:, an exhibition, which, in conjunction with NY-based artist Heidi Hahn's stellar show, Burn Out in Shredded Heaven, continues on until May 23rd. Flaunt had the lovely opportunity to chat with Boyland on his experiences growing up in the South, the inspiration behind his work, and the power behind portraiture.
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Gonzalo Lebrija is one of Mexico's most renowned contemporary artists. Across a connective thematic thread examining the porous borders between life and death, dreams and phenomena, mind and body, eye and spirit, Lebrija practices in a fluid continuum of materials including but not limited to painting, sculpture and video — examples of all of which will be on view at his exhibition opening this weekend at Kohn Gallery in Hollywood.
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Propaganda and art are often thought of as opposites: The former rehashing cliches to serve the powers that be, and the latter inspiring individuals to believe they are in the presence of something special — a unique human expression, unlike anything else in the world.
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The women in Rosa Loy’s dreamlike figurative paintings have always been engaged in something significant: just don’t ask the artist what it all means. In a new show at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, the member of the so-called New Leipzig School is happy for her paintings to lead to a little confusion. Words by Katya Tylevich
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Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles now represents Guadalajara, Mexico–based artist Gonzalo Lebrija, who is perhaps best known for his painting series “Veladuras,” in which he layers shades of paint to create geometric abstractions.
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Artist Heidi Hahn will now be represented by Kohn gallery in Los Angeles and Nathalie Karg Gallery in New York.
Kohn will host its first solo show with the New York–based artist in the spring of next year, and Karg has a solo show on tap with her for March of 2020.
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