Curated by Joshua Friedman Kohn Gallery
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myselves CURATED BY JOSHUA FRIEDMAN KOHN GALLERY ARTISTS KATE BARBEE ROMARE BEARDEN AMOAKO BOAFO JARVIS BOYLAND WILLIAM BRICKEL CHELSEA CULPRIT BRUCE CONNER rafa esparza HAMISHI FARAH NASH GLYNN HEIDI HAHN NAOTAKA HIRO LOIE HOLLOWELL OSCAR YI HOU GERALD LOVELL JESSE MOCKRIN SOPHIA NARRETT JAGDEEP RAINA ERIN M. RILEY MOISES SALAZAR PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA EMILY MAE SMITH CHIFFON THOMAS WOLFGANG TILLMANS SALMAN TOOR XIUCHING TSAY SKYE VOLMAR Sophia Narrett, Heart, 2018, embroidery thread, acrylic, aluminum and fabric, 25 x 7 1/2 inches detail Kate Barbee, Rain, 2018-20, acrylic, oil paint, painted scraps, thread, oil pastel, cold wax on canvas, 72 x 72 inches detail Chiffon Thomas, I’ll See For You If You Speak For Me, 2020 Embroidery foss, fabric, thread, chalk, pastel and window screen mesh, 21 1/2 x 20 inches detail Chiffon Thomas, Too Soon, 2020 Embroidery foss, fabric, leather, rusted paper, thread, chalk, pastel and window screen mesh, 21 1/2 x 28 inches detail Chiffon Thomas, I’ll See For You If You Speak For Me, 2020 Embroidery foss, fabric, thread, chalk, pastel and window screen mesh, 21 1/2 x 20 inches Moises Salazar, Clean, 2020, yarn and glitter on satin, 29 x 29 inches detail Moises Salazar, In my feelings, 2020, yarn and glitter on satin, 29 x 29 inches rafa esparza, Guadalupe Macias Ybarra. ¿Qué?, 2018, adobe, wood, chain link fence and acrylic, 93 x 45 x 1 1/2 inches detail installation Gerald Lovell, Sham, 2020, oil on panel, 40 x 30 inches detail Amoako Boafo, Untitled, 2018, oil on canvas, 52 1/2 x 46 inches Oscar yi Hou, Mlle. Chris à central park 103rd, en automne, 2019, oil on canvas, 60 x 40 inches detail Jagdeep Raina, i am glad you came back, 2019, embroidered tapestry phulkari on muslin, 18 x 12 inches Jagdeep Raina, Serving love and qawali’s since the early 90s, 2016 Mixed media on paper, 26 x 40 inches Jagdeep Raina, Our Loving Temple, from you we learned that this world is false. From you we learned that nothing last forever, 2015 Mixed media on paper, 22 x 30 inches William Brickel, The Trammels of Those Two, 2020, oil on canvas, 59 x 47 1/4 inches detail installation Nash Glynn, Forward, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches Heidi Hahn, Woman I Know, A Woman I’ve Seen, 2020, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches detail installation Jarvis Boyland, Bloom, 2020, oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches detail installation Chelsea Culprit, Your Roots Are Showing: Preteen Chimeras with Summer Fruit and Walmart Panties, 2020 Oil, acrylic, oil stick, pastel collage and digitally printed canvas on canvas, 47 1/4 x 118 inches detail installation Naotaka Hiro, Untitled (Inn), 2020, acrylic, graphite, grease pencil and crayon on wood, 58 x 42 inches detail Naotaka Hiro, Untitled (parallelogram), 2020, acrylic, graphite, grease pencil and crayon on wood, 58 x 42 inches installation Loie Hollowell, Prenatal Plumb Line in red-orange, green and purple, 2020 detail Soft pastel and graphite on paper, 34 x 26 inches; framed 41 1/2 x 33 inches detail detail Emily Mae Smith, The Knot, 2020, oil on linen, 30 x 23 inches detail Emily Mae Smith, Live Forever, 2020, oil on linen, 12 x 9 inches detail Skye Volmar, Pollinators, 2020, colored pencil, make-up on paper, 14 x 11 inches Skye Volmar, Look-alike (Clermont Twins), 2020, colored pencil, make-up on paper, 11 x 14 inches Skye Volmar, You, Me (Cloned), 2020, colored pencil on paper, 22 x 25 inches detail Skye Volmar, Like Moth to a Flame, 2020, colored pencil, make-up and oil pastel on paper, 11 x 8 1/2 inches installation Xiuching Tsay, A lost child picked fowers from the starry feld, 2020, oil and pastel on canvas, 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches Xiuching Tsay, One few over the cuckoo’s nest, 2020, oil on canvas, 19 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches Jesse Mockrin, Before Battle, 2020, oil on cotton, 62 x 43 inches each, overall 79 1/2 x 87 inches detail installation Jesse Mockrin, After, 2020, oil on cotton, 26 x 18 inches each, overal 31 x 37 inches Erin Riley, Refections 4, 2019, wool and cotton, 59 x 48 inches Erin Riley, Refections 5, 2019, wool and cotton, 49 x 48 inches detail Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Figure(_2100617), 2017, archival pigment print, 32 x 24 inches, framed: 32 3/4 x 24 3/4 inches, ed 1 of 5 detail Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mirror Study(_Q5A2097), 2016, archival pigment print, framed: 24 x 20 inches, ed 4 of 5 Wolfgang Tillmans, Karl, Utoquai 14, 2012, inkjet print on paper, 12 x 16 inches, framed: 13 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches, ed 7 of 10 Wolfgang Tillmans, Karl, Utoquai 12, 2012, inkjet print on paper, 12 x 16 inches, framed: 13 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches, ed 7 of 10 Hamishi Farah, Untitled, 2020, acrylic and pumice on linen, 31 x 46 1/2 inches detail installation Bruce Conner, BLINDMAN’S BLUFF, 1987/2003, Jacquard tapestry, 64 x 56 inches installation Bruce Conner, UNTITLED, 1976, ink on paper, 7 x 5 1/4 inches, framed: 15 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches detail FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE myselves CURATED BY JOSHUA FRIEDMAN SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2020 Los Angeles, CA – Kohn Gallery is pleased to present myselves, a group exhibition curated by Joshua Friedman, which features over twenty-five contemporary artists who use medium as a lens to examine the ways in which identity is structured or fabricated. With an eye to the physical, social, and historical properties of their chosen media, these emerging and established artists portray the self in pieces—as fragments that may accumulate and amalgamate but never entirely cohere. Identity can be as fluid as a watercolor in which one color bleeds into another; as fractured as a collage composed of ripped strips of paper; as multilayered as a painting that has been built up lovingly and laboriously over the passage of time. It is through the physicality of medium that the works on view confront the myth of selfhood’s unchanging rigidity and turn instead to its fertile nebulousness—looking beyond mind over matter, toward matters of the mind. 1227 North Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038 www.kohngallery.com A sweeping presentation of work concerning racial, gendered, sexual, and national identities, myselves will overtake all three of the gallery’s exhibition spaces. The show features pieces spanning a wide array of media: painting, collage, embroidery, drawing, sculpture, photography, and their variegated intersections. Viewers encounter the weavings of Erin M. Riley and Sophia Narrett, whose elaborate tapestries and embroideries examine the construction of the self on social media and the internet; the wax-infused paintings of Heidi Hahn, which grapple with the biographical realities of oft-idealized female bodies; and the slippery avatars of Emily Mae Smith, whose hyper-realistic paintings bring together and repurpose a deep lexicon of art history, framing the vast scale and range of human subjectivity. The exhibition also features the paintings of Salman Toor that consider the tensions between public and private identities of queer brown men; the performative work of rafa esparza, whose adobe panels serve as sites for brown and queer community-building; and the figurative assemblages of Chiffon Thomas, that interpret personal feelings of nostalgia, longing to belong and affirmations of self-identity. This materially diverse grouping provides insight into the many ways that medium and meaning can develop in tandem, as artists reflect upon selfhood’s unstable and ever-changing terrain. myselves brings what’s under the surface to the surface. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Kate Barbee’s practice is an interdisciplinary one, ranging across hand embroidered mixed media painting, collage, drawing, and sculpture. The inherent tension in her work is born from a flurried relationship to her body and her visceral power within it. Her works harnesses emotional and sexual directness and figural distortion which abstracts the figures beyond recognition and distances them from the activities in which they are engaged. Every painting is a snapshot of the self, taken from an angle removed from the moment as if floating above or next to it— raw, naked, and dominant. Barbee currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. A pioneer of African-American art and celebrated collagist, Romare Bearden seamlessly blended images of African-American life in the urban and rural South with references to popular culture, religion, and Classical art and myth. He depicted jazz musicians, monumental subjects, nudes, or mythological characters set against abstract, fragmented backgrounds. Bearden sought to give the African-American experience a universal, monumental, and Classical representation: he would often recast the characters of Classical events as African-American subjects, drawing the political injustices of his time into a universal, allegorical context. Romare Bearden, died, March 12, 1988, New York, NY. 1227 North Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038 www.kohngallery.com Living and working in Vienna, Austria, Amoako Boafo identifies the primary idea of his practice as representation, documenting, celebrating and showing new ways to approach Blackness. Much of his work is inspired by his upbringing, commenting on how males are raised to be aggressive and masculine, which he challenges in his works. In opposition to normalized toxic masculinity, Boafo’s subjects are serenely-posed, pensive, and of sensitive disposition— celebrating his identity and Blackness. Jarvis Boyland navigates intersections of black identity through portraiture. Based on photographic images which the artist then reconfigures to create specific compositions, his paintings focus on queer men of color within intimate spaces, sensitively highlighting the nuances of these complex interpersonal relationships, identities, and locales.