Kushner first began using textiles and fabrics with acrylic paint in his 1971 performance pieces. In these performances, the fabrics were both functional pieces and art objects when the costumes were installed on the walls as two-dimensional objects. Through his use of fabric, Kushner connected painting, decoration, and clothing, while also blurring gender issues and questioning stereotypes of artistic practice and materials. By the mid-1970s, Kushner was creating wall-specific fabric paintings, ones that were not a part of a performance. His conscious decision to ignore the rise in popularity of reductivist painting on canvas, and to exhibit unstretched fabrics that were pinned to a wall, was a deliberate action that he continued until the mid-1990s. In 1988, Kushner first began to explore oil painting and collage on canvas. Though there was a fundamental shift in his practice at this time, Kushner continued to use color and pattern as fundamental building blocks in his paintings.

Since 1975, Kushner’s work has been exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan. In 1984, Kushner was the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, and in 1987, a mid-career summary was organized by the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. Kushner’s work was featured in the 1979 and 1981 Venice Biennales and the 1975, 1981, and 1985 Whitney Biennials. More recently, Kushner has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally: Pattern and Decoration: Ornament as Promise, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany (traveled to mumok Vienna and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest); Pattern, Decoration & Crime, Le Consortium, Dijon; Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art and Design, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA and the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; and Greater New York at MoMA P.S.1. His work will be included in the upcoming exhibitions Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Too Much is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration, Asheville Art Museum, NC.