Michael Kohn Gallery

About the Gallery
Since its establishment in 1985 by Michael Kohn, Michael Kohn Gallery has presented historically significant exhibitions in Los Angeles alongside exciting contemporary artists, creating meaningful contexts to establish links to a greater art historical continuum. Michael Kohn Gallery represents important West Coast artists with long careers and rich histories such as Joe Goode, Lita Albuquerque, and Sharon Ellis, as well as the Estates of Bruce Conner, Wallace Berman, John Altoon and Martha Alf. Michael Kohn Gallery boasts an expanding roster of emerging and mid-career artists including William Brickel, Alicia Adamerovich, Chiffon Thomas, Heidi Hahn, Jinbin Chen, Nir Hod, Siji Krishnan, Li Hei Di, Sophia Narrett, Shiwen Wang, Kate Barbee, Rosa Loy, and Mark Innerst.

About the Presentation
Michael Kohn Gallery is pleased to present a collection of new paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Queens-based artist Alicia Adamerovich (b.1989). This is both the artist and gallery’s debut presentation at the Independent. The body of work, ranging from graphite and pastel works on paper to painting and sculpture, continues Adamerovich’s investigations of truth, absurdity, and objective reality through enigmatic and intriguing forms.

Evoking Artemisia Gentileschi by way of David Cronenberg, Adamerovich’s work invites her audience to visualize their own psychological state. The landscapes, seemingly barren with their darkened color palette and organic oil paint surfaces of pumice and sand, come gracefully alive with radiant orbs and spiraling, structured appendages. Adamerovich draws from the realms of the arboreal, anatomical, and fantastical. At times protruding into the third-dimension, these strange figures are anthropomorphic and seductive in nature.

In this body of work, Adamerovich invokes control and chaos through loose and untethered lines. The shapes in works like Double-knot, and Excuse me I have work to do, move across their compositions in wave-like patterns, rendering anti-forms that are disjunctive and open. Through her traced study of chaos, Adamerovich reintegrates security with her methodical application of earth-tones, pointillistic marks, tangible textures, and comical wordplay; for instance, the title Double-knot references the inherent security in the nature of the bind.

Reckoning with their palpable instability, Adamerovich’s forms wobble across the canvas, oscillating between playfulness, discomfort, and insecurity. Amorphous shapes dangle perilously from their edges and balance over her newest sculpture–a minimal, geometric arrangement of 86,000 wooden cubes assembled into a solid surface that inhabits the booth. Deftly treading the delicate line between chaos and harmony, the collective display of works forms a single organism that thrives on the tension between order and unpredictability. “When everything feels inevitable, there are things I can control,” Adamerovich explains, “the color, the surface, the line, and the light.”

Alicia Adamerovich was born in Latrobe, PA and is currently based in Queens, NY. She received her Bachelor of Design from Pennsylvania State University in 2013. Adamerovich has been a recipient of several residencies including the Hayama Artist Residency, Hayama, Japan; Del Vaz Projects Residency, Los Angeles, CA; Moly Sabata Artist Residency, Albert Gleizes Foundation, Sablons, FR; and Palazzo Monti Residency, Brescia, IT. Recent exhibitions include Rude Awakening, Timothy Taylor, New York, NY (2024); This is the time of the hour, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Ultra-gentle manipulation of delicate structures, Projet Pangée, Montréal, QC (2022); Second Nature, Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2021); and A Bat out of Hell, Sans Titre (2016), Paris, FR. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; He Art Museum, Guangdong, China; X Museum, Beijing; and the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas.