Artists | MAKI Gallery | MAKI

Born in 1980 in Virginia, Michael Kagan completed his BA at The George Washington University in 2003, followed by an MFA and postgraduate fellowship at the New York Academy of Art in 2005. Currently based in Brooklyn, New York, Kagan’s praxis centers on a continued exploration of the tension between abstraction and representation, particularly through the medium of oil-painting. Rhythmical, abstract brushstrokes in both bright and muted hues coalesce at a distance to form iconic, high-contrast images of man defying the limits of possibility whether astronauts, rocket launches, surfers, or mountain peaks.
Kagan’s recent solo exhibitions include To The Moon, MAKI Gallery (Tokyo, 2022); It Lasts Forever, Almine Rech Gallery (London, 2022); How We Remember, Almine Rech Gallery (Brussels, 2021); It’s Never Over, Over the Influence (Hong Kong, 2021); We Have Felt The Ground Shake, Bill Brady Gallery (Miami, 2018); and Summit Push, Half Gallery (New York, 2017). He has also participated in various group exhibitions in the US and Europe. The artist held his first museum show, I Was There When It Happened, at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019.