(Artwork by Jonathan Lyndon Chase – Pulpit)
Kohn Gallery presents Engender, a group exhibition featuring  contemporary artists who are revolutionizing the way we visualize conventional gender as exclusively male or female. Established in 1985, the 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.

Through painting, a medium that has traditionally embraced this binary, these artists are pushing the genre in new, unprecedented directions, challenging the ways in which paintings can be used to deconstruct and rewrite conventional notions of personal identity. The exhibition highlights the inter-blending of traditional and figurative abstraction as the foundation for more fluid and inclusive expressions of identity, engendering a new visual pronoun. Engender is beyond the binary.

“If the show can expose people to questions about gender, questions that they may have never known to ask, that would be a success in my book.  I want people to be exposed to this topic first and foremost.  I think awareness is what will lead to further conversation.  When you have something so tethered to a long history of cultural categorizations such as gender, assumptions occurs.  Assumptions that negate proper exposure, discussion, and education on a very complex and multilayered component of all our lives.  The artists in the exhibition are reclaiming that narrative, visually crafting languages that speak to their own unique experience, and yet can very much be understood by all.”
~ Joshua Friedman, Curator and Associate Director of Kohn Gallery 
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