Charles Cohen
Medium: Photography Studio Location: Arris Lofts, 27-28 Thomson Avenue at 44th Drive - Studio# WS12 Website:: www.promulgator.com Artist Bio: Born, New York, New York, 1968 Education/Fellowships 2016 Saltonstall Arts Colony, Ithaca NY 1997-99 Core Fellowship Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1995 MFA, with honors, Rhode Island School of Design 1994 Exchange Student, Royal College of Art, London, UK 1990 BA, University of Chicago Solo Exhibitions 2015 The Way It Was And Other Recent Work, Julie Mehretu Studio, New York, NY The Way It Was And Other Recent Work, LIC Arts OPEN, Long Island City, NY 2014 Yank, LIC Arts OPEN, Long Island City, NY 2013 Heart in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, LIC Arts OPEN, Long Island City, NY 2012 About Face, LIC Arts OPEN, Long Island City, NY 2007 Standard Double, pHytonics.net, Powerhouse Books, New York, NY 2005 Buff, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland Oregon 2004 Buff, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY 2004 Your Condition is Not Permanent, Genovese/Sullivan Gallery, Boston 2001 Once Removed, Genovese/Sullivan Gallery, Boston 2000 Straight abstractions, Genovese/Sullivan Gallery, Boston 1998 that, FotoFest 98, Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Houston Group Exhibitions 2017 Heart In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction (forthcoming), Porter Contemporary, NY 2016 Figures, Nowness.com 2015 Abstract Architecture, Gold Coast Arts Center, Great Neck, NY Noise Video Festival, Filmessay.com 2013 Sex Sells, LUMAS, Bielefeld, Germany 2012 Flesh and Bone, Portland Art Museum, Portland OR Reflections SPACEWOMb Gallery, Long Island City, NY Think Unsexy Thoughts: A Post Erotic Art Show, Wardenclyffe Gallery, Austin, TX 2010 Altered Realities, curated by David Waddell, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX 2008 Digitalia: Intimacy in the Hyperreal, Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, TX 2007 Lisbon Village Festival, Lisbon, Portugal Digital Painting, LUMAS, New York,NY Digital Painting, LUMAS, Berlin, Germany 2006 Photographs I Love, Patricia Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA The Body Familiar: Current Perspectives of the Nude, Griffin Museum, Winchester, MA London vs. New York, Curated by Karim Hamid, New York, NY 19th Anniversay Exhibition, Genovese/Sullivan, Boston, MA 2005 Girls on Film, Zwirner-Wirth Gallery, New York, NY Today's Voice, Neuhoff Gallery, New York, NY All in the Family, Texas Gallery, Houston, TX 2004 Lying Eyes, Cartelle Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Drop Out, Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY Black Milk, Marvelli Gallery, New York, NY 2003 Locating Intimacy, SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA CMYK part I: Contemporary Color, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY 2002 ParisPhoto, Carrousel du Louvre, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, Paris, France Armory Photography, Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York, NY For Adults Only, Hall Space Gallery, Boston, MA Scope Art Fair (video screening), New York, NY FotoFest 2002, Classicism and Beyond, Houston Caught, Montserrat College of Art, Beverley MA 2000 If god thought man should be making abstract art he never would let him see the pretty blue sky, said the fictitious, pious almost dash existent neighbor. Genovese / Sullivan Gallery, Boston 1999 Annual Print Auction, Houston Center for Photography, Houston Core 1999, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1998 Universal Pictures, Rudolph Poissant Gallery, Houston Ticking, Webb Gallery, Waxahachi, TX The Chair and The Figure, Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Houston Core 1998, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Millenium Fever, DiverseWorks, Houston 1997 Group Show, Jan Abrams Fine Arts, New York Not Still Art, Video Art Festival and Cable Program, Cooperstown, NY 1995 i insist, MFA Thesis Presentation, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence 1994 Group Show, Royal College of Art, London, UK 1993 Photography Now, Rye Arts Center, Rye, NY Selected Bibliography 2015 Flaunt Magazine, Charles Cohen, January 2015 2012 Lander, Tobias, Die Dingwelt der Pop Art, Michael Imhof Verlag, p. 219, 221 2009 Dantzic, Cynthia Maris, 100 New York Photographers, Schiffer Publishing Dennis, Kelly, ART/PORN: A History of Seeing and Touching, Berg Publishers Ltd. 2008 Dander, Heinemann, Ullrich, Collecting Fine Art Photography, Volume 1, teNeues Carroll, Sean,Digitalia, review, ART LIES Magazine, Fall EXIT 29, Peepshow, El Espectaculo del Sexo, Feb, March, April, pp.163-167 2007 Fotograf Magazine, Eroticon, Oct 2006 Mark Cooley, Absence/Presence, Rhizome.org 2005 Baker, Village Voice Online, Art, Girls on Film, August 29 Blue Sky Gallery, Blue Sky 04/05, April 2004 Smith, Rachel, UCSF Synapse, Review of Loca Artist Statement: From the threshold between participation and observation, I break with day to day experience. I see the ethnographer's dilemma as key to the human experience to participate in and to observe our own lives. I take on this contradiction wholeheartedly. Choose the betwixt state in order to fend off reductive interpretations of existence that are embedded in our culture. Us versus them. Like versus dislike. Duality, with an insidious allure of simplicity, pollutes our mechanism of perception. As the premise of my process, I mark these opposites "nature and culture", "self and other", "present and absent", "is and is not", as conflations on which we lean in order to define the world and feel safe. Once flagged, the farce collapses to reveal the simplest truth of all not only that are we the source of what we perceive, but also that we are one in the same as the things we see. My work explores a range of subjects, literal and figurative, in an embrace of liminality and in confrontation with a binary view. The result transforms the subject/object relationship from real to metaphor and liberates a state of being one. I work in mechanically reproducible media as the democratic nature of photography carries a tension between original and copy that parallels my internal dialog as well as that of the concepts of self and other, and presence and absence. All images and text copyright Charles Cohen