Cathy Cohen “Affinities”

Soho20 Chelsea Gallery

poster for Cathy Cohen “Affinities”

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Affinities, an exhibition of recent watercolor portraits by Cathleen Cohen, illustrates an intimate collaboration between artist and sitter. Cohen relishes in the timeless delight of documenting our lives and the lives of those closest to us. This body of work is also a reaction to that primal human urge to stand outside of our selves in order to look within. Her subjects are close friends and families, characters whose idiosyncratic strivings inevitably trickle into her subconscious, yielding reciprocal reverberations. Cohen’s portraits compose a visual diary salted with unions, curiosities, wisdom and revelations. The series started with the women in her family, taking on the complexion of a carefully charted genealogical study. Tracing an oft-coded narrative of emotional perceptivity and instinctual insight, she detects her granddaughter’s sense of determination in a portrait of her grandmother, her dignified carriage, lengths of her fingers, the way she maneuvers her wrist. The medium allows Cohen to dance her paintings: there is a quality of lightness, optimism and spontaneity that pulses throughout her work. Watercolor is fleeting and immediate, demanding that she remain attentive as edges, washes and colors blur. In its unforgiving nature, the exhilaration of swift connectedness sees the portrait become more of a moment, or a glimpse mid-story, rather than a fleshed out likeness. Cohen also incorporates language into her process, considering the possibilities inherent in the relationship between visual materiality and poetic structure. Working with poetry allows her to move freely between the weight of surface and experience, navigating between paint, sound, form and construct.

Media

Schedule

from April 01, 2014 to April 26, 2014

Opening Reception on 2014-04-03 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Cathy Cohen

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