A 2024 Look Back from the Komo Team: Top Group Shows of the Year
1. “Thirty Years: Written with a Splash of Blood” at Blum Los Angeles, (Jan 13–Mar 3, 2024)
A milestone exhibition and celebration of the gallery's thirtieth anniversary. Co-curated by Founder, Tim Blum and postwar Japanese art historian Mika Yoshitake, the exhibition was an inter-generational survey of Japanese art from the 1960s to the present. We loved everything about this show.
Featured Artists: Yoshitomo Nara,Susumu Koshimizu,Takashi Murakami and more
2. “Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture” at Seattle Art Museum (Jun 21–Sep 2, 2024)
“Poke in the Eye: Art of the West Coast Counterculture” focused on the aesthetic practices that emerged in the West Coast in the 1960s and ‘70s as counter to the New York-centric avant-garde. The movement shows the work of artists who reacted against the sleekness, formality, and coldness of Pop Art, minimalism, artists based on the West Coast (and particularly in Seattle and the Bay Area). Utilizing traditional craft techniques (especially ceramics), bold color, centering figuration and narrative, and often with an irreverent sense of humor, these artists organically crafted an aesthetic that curator Peter Selz described in the pivotal 1967 Funk exhibition catalogue as “senselessness, absurdity, and fun” and “loud, unashamed, and free.” Such a breath of fresh air in the Seattle art community to see a show like this at the Seattle Art Museum - we loved it.
Featured Artists: Howard Kottler, Bruce Nauman, Patti Warashina, Robert Arneson, and more
3. “Human Nature” at The Journal Gallery Los Angeles (June 7-Aug 10, 2024)
An excellent contemporary figuration show in West Hollywood. Such a beautifully curated show with so many artists of this moment whose work we love.
Featured Artists: Marianne Vitale, Marcus Leslie Singleton, Alex Becerra, Marcus Jahmal, Emily Ferguson, Oliver Clegg, Nicole Wittenberg, Katherine Bradford, Yves Scherer, Spencer Sweeney, and Jules de Balincourt
4. “Post-Human” at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles (Sept 12, 2024–Jan 18, 2025)
Post-Human examined multiple aspects of the postmodern construction of personality and the engineering and transcendence of the human body. The artists in the exhibition embraced notions of plurality, metamorphosis and multi-beingness at times through a "cultured body", shown as cyber-futuristic, surgically improved, commodified, stereotyped, and politicized, reflecting on a variety of concerns that define our age. Maybe the top show of the year in terms of a make you think, laugh, feel, question, smile, scream, agonize, stop again, reflect, think back, go back - phew. This show blew us away.
Featured Artists: Isabelle Albuquerque, Matthew Barney, Ivana Bašić, Frank Benson, Ashley Bickerton, Maurizio Cattelan, Chris Cunningham, John Currin, Alex Da Corte, Olivia Erlanger, Jana Euler, Rachel Feinstein, Urs Fischer, Pippa Garner, Robert Gober, Hugh Hayden, Damien Hirst, Tishan Hsu, Pierre Huyghe, Anne Imhof, Alex Israel, Arthur Jafa, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Mike Kelley, Josh Kline, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Sam McKinniss, Mariko Mori, Takashi, Murakami, Wangechi Mutu, Cady Noland, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Hajime Sorayama, Anna Uddenberg, Cajsa von Zeipel, Jeff Wall, Jordan Wolfson, Anicka Yi
