Ed Cohen: Meditation

Press Release

Artgate Gallery is pleases to announce the solo exhibition of Edwin Cohen, a self-taught artist who, at the age of sixty-four, becomes an emerging artist at a time when it is common for artist to make a big splash just out of graduate school.

Cohen has chosen to work within the complex and critically contested area of abstract painting, reflecting his intellectual and emotional life.  He uses a few very simple elements and basic colors to maximum effect, maintaining the principle of flatness and fills his canvases with motifs such strip patterns or drips distributed across fields of white or black.  Cohen's work reveal comples visual distinctions between microcosms and macrocosms - like small worlds morphing mysteriously into larger worlds and back again.

At this modern day, any assertion that there are critical or philosophical imperatives that are to be privileged over all others is considered the product of a n ideological or metaphysical system.  In the case of Cohen's artwork, putting forth an essentialist argument would constitute a limitation.

Cohen's art is essentially the product of multiplicity of dialogues; it is a network of influences and intention. We can identify and trace his paintings to be derived from formalism, as well as Abstract Expressionism.  In terms of formality, Cohen focuses on the role that diverse practices play in the relationship between appearance, self and content.  At the same time, he uses Abstract Expressionism is one of his inspirations.  Cohen's paintings are products of both an observed and learned history of gestural abstract painting, challenging us not to see the world through our expectations.