Michael Kagan: Downforce
A collision of art and Formula One at Pace Prints, New York
Michael Kagan’s recent solo exhibition Downforce at Pace Prints, New York, offered a captivating collision between the worlds of contemporary art and Formula One racing. On view from 21 March to 26 April 2025, the show featured 16 new collage works that embodied the speed, precision, and drama of the motorsport’s elite level. Known for celebrating figures who challenge human limits, Kagan turned his focus to F1 — the pinnacle of global motor racing — with striking emotional and technical depth.
Michael Kagan: Artist of Human Endurance
Brooklyn-based artist Michael Kagan has long been fascinated by human ambition and the pursuit of the impossible. His previous work explored astronauts and explorers, but with Downforce, Kagan redirected this focus toward Formula One drivers — modern gladiators navigating machines at over 200 miles per hour. With a background from George Washington University and the New York Academy of Art, his work has graced international institutions and collections, known for its combination of physicality, abstraction, and storytelling.
Formula One as Artistic Muse
Formula One racing — with its staggering speeds, global fan base, and glamorous reputation — is more than a sport. It’s a spectacle of technology, human endurance, and risk. Drivers experience G-forces up to 5 times their body weight, operate vehicles that represent the height of engineering, and must remain composed under extreme mental pressure. For Kagan, this world offered the perfect metaphor: a visual and emotional language rich with tension, elegance, and intensity.
Downforce, named after the aerodynamic force that keeps cars glued to the track, became a conceptual anchor for the exhibition. In racing, downforce determines grip, control, and ultimately, the difference between victory and disaster. In Kagan’s work, it became a symbol of internal gravity — the emotional weight borne by those who push themselves to extremes.
Pace Prints: Where Innovation Meets Speed
Pace Prints has long supported artists exploring process, texture, and experimentation, making it the ideal venue for Kagan’s first solo show with the gallery. Located in Chelsea, New York’s centre for contemporary art, the exhibition not only attracted art-world attention but drew in motorsport enthusiasts and collectors seeking a new visual language to celebrate F1’s legacy.
Kagan’s Technique: Collage as Motion
Moving beyond traditional painting, Kagan collaborated for over two years with Pace’s master printers to develop a technique combining hand-painted and squeegeed monoprints with meticulous hand-cutting and collage assembly. The result: richly layered, high-impact compositions that appear almost photographic at a distance, yet dissolve into painterly chaos up close. These pieces captured the sense of motion, danger, and beauty inherent to racing, using texture and colour to echo the adrenaline of the track.
Portraits of a High-Speed Pantheon
Kagan’s subjects include some of F1’s most legendary figures and defining moments. In Global Player, he portrays Lewis Hamilton moments after his breakthrough Grand Prix win — a depiction full of triumph and vulnerability. In Moving Through Time and Space, the fiery mid-air crash between Fernando Alonso and Charles Leclerc is transformed into a moment of suspended drama.
By avoiding facial features and instead using helmet designs, team colours, and sponsor logos as identity markers, Kagan reinforces the mythic status of these drivers. Works like The Protagonist (night) and Driver channel Kimi Räikkönen’s icy determination and Fernando Alonso’s tenacity, while The Champion celebrates Max Verstappen’s dominance with classical composure. These figures become avatars of resilience, their anonymity allowing universal emotion to rise to the surface.
Why Collectors Took Notice
The response to Downforce was overwhelmingly positive. For collectors, Kagan’s work offers more than aesthetic appeal — it captures contemporary mythology. Formula One has never been more popular globally, and Kagan’s ability to elevate its icons through fine art has positioned him as a leading figure in a new wave of sports-inspired contemporary work. His collages speak to power, legacy, and the cost of greatness — themes deeply resonant in both art and athletics.
A Lasting Legacy of Speed and Substance
Downforce reaffirmed Michael Kagan’s position as an artist of emotional scale and technical skill. His ability to translate the ferocity and poetry of Formula One into a fine art language was both surprising and deeply affecting. For those who saw the show — whether seasoned collectors or racing fans — it was a rare moment when art kept pace with the speed of life.
Start collecting Michael Kagan
