NEW YORK, NY – De Buck Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of Houston-based artist Joseph Cohen’s work. The exhibition will be on view at the gallery from September 3 to October 3, 2015, with an opening reception to be held on September 10 from 6-8 PM, and it marks Cohen’s debut with the gallery.
Joseph Cohen’s Propositions, his series of primarily monochromatic panels, are thoughtful meditations on the physicality of painting in the contemporary world. Through his meticulous and unique process of utilizing hundreds of thin layers of hand-made paints, which incorporate metal specks, diamond dust, etc. along with pigment, Cohen creates tactile, almost viscous surfaces that seem to drip beyond the confines of two-dimensional space, an effect that is emphasized by the angularity of the panel emerging from the wall.
In Dasein, Cohen seeks to embrace an intimate relationship between the artist as creator, the object, and the viewer. The title of the exhibition derives from a German philosophical term, most associated with Heidegger, which translates as “being there” or “existence.” For Heidegger, dasein refers to the existence of an individual only as he exists within the world around him. Cohen reinterprets the term in the context of the exhibition, expressing a desire for viewers to lose themselves in the physical environment of the gallery space surrounded by artwork, as a means to abandon pre-conceived notions of what painting is. The exhibition serves as a starting point to experience the linked physical and chromatic qualities of the Propositions as a means to regain an intimacy and reflectiveness that is often lost in fast-paced contemporary life, between both the artist and the viewer vis-à-vis the artwork.
Joseph Cohen was born in 1982 and currently lives and works in Houston, TX. He holds painting degrees from Texas State University and the University of Texas San Antonio. Cohen’s work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and the New Bedford Art Museum, and is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.
