Hollis Taggart Gallery

July 28, 2025July 27, 2025, by Taylor Bielecki

John Knuth: The Hot Garden: Renewal and Regeneration from Catastrophe

*Sculptural Garden, Installation Shot, photo courtesy of Hollis Taggart*

Seeing John Knuth’s exhibition, The Hot Garden, at Hollis Taggart’s new downtown outpost was wonderful, surreal, energetic, and unexpected. This is Knuth’s first major body of work following the devastating Eaton Fire in January 2025, which destroyed the artist’s home and archive. This exhibition gives us an opportunity to see fragments of the past and the birth or rebirth of something entirely new out of the ashes, embodying the quote in the press release from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, writer and once Altadena resident, “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”

September 30, 2024October 6, 2024, by Anna Shukeylo

Art Spiel Picks: Chelsea Exhibitions in October 2024

HIGHLIGHTS

Tim Kent, Edges Off a Model, Courtesy of Hollis Taggart Gallery

The fall season opened strong with some very exciting painting shows in Chelsea and its outskirts. The not to be missed stand alone Monya Rowe Gallery is featuring work by two innovative female painters, while in the heart of Chelsea, Hollis Taggart is featuring Tim Kent’s captivating works in his second solo show with the gallery. Right across the street, Fergus McCaffrey Gallery is showcasing fresh work by a seasoned German painter Reinhard Pods.

December 8, 2023December 24, 2023, by Etty Yaniv

Zahra Nazari: Interiors

In Dialogue

Inside Out Oculus, 2022, acrylic on mylar, 36×45.5 in.

In her Interiors painting series, American Iranian-born painter Zahra Nazari draws on prominent features in classical Persian and Islamic architecture—decorative botanical motifs, arch, and particularly, iwan, the large, vaulted hall semi-enclosed and usually walled on three sides, with one end entirely open. Many scholars believe its origin can be traced back to the Parthian era. While looking at Nazari’s luminous surfaces, it may be interesting to keep in mind the dual role of the Persian arch—it serves both decorative and functional purposes—this richly decorated key aesthetic element in Persian architecture functions not only as an ornament but also as a structural support that provides stability. It is also designed to moderate the amount of sunlight that enters space, especially in iwans or other open spaces. Nazari’s frequent use of Mylar as a surface stirs a play on the notion of external and internal light, and simultaneously, her saturated color palette invokes a hot and arid climate with bright, sunlit days and crisp nights. Repetitive and rhythmical, these motifs coalesce into energetic, translucent, and luminous surfaces, evoking an interior space in flux. Zahra Nazari elaborates on her ideas and process in this interview with Art Spiel.

February 8, 2021February 26, 2021, by Sarah Corona

Mercedes Matter Awards Show at Margalit Startup City

Artist, writer, and educator Mercedes Matter’s legacy is a memorable one. Matter studied and worked with many notable artists including Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning during the 1930s and 40s, and then founded the New York Studio School in the tumultuous year of 1964. The Studio School became one of the defining institutions of the New York art scene and delivered high profile artists from that year on. One telling fact is that Leo Castelli and company were habitual goers, and this is still the case today.