23 June 2008

Nicole Cohen

Nicole Cohen (Courtesy of the artist)

(The following article is taken from the U.S. Department of State publication, Art on the Edge: 17 Contemporary American Artists.)

Taking Notes from The New York Times, 2000 (Courtesy of the artist and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, CA)

"I find inspiration in interior designed spaces that seem to have certain personalities and attitudes already set to accommodate a particular room.

Architects and interior designers surely incorporate these behaviors into their own blue print plans, but then I react and discover possible expectations and set my own stage. I use pictures of rooms as stages that usually become a screen (the digital print) for the video projection to perform on top of.

As I mostly work with video installation, I aim to experience these ideas and possibilities through performance and by playing them out. This is a way for me to understand how my own views relate to places that are already constructed. Although I use actors in my practice, my work is made personal by using them to collaborate about ideas for the drama or actions that could occur in that location. Part of the motivation stems from feeling pressured to act as prescribed in certain locations and the desire to change that fate."

[Nicole Cohen (b. 1970, Falmouth, Massachusetts) attended the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (MFA 1999), and Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts (BA 1992). She received an Artist Space Grant from the City of Brooklyn, New York (2000); and a Southern California Worldwide Grant from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles (1999). She has had solo exhibitions at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica (2003, 2000), and her first solo museum show entitled, "My Vie en Rose," was a video installation at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts (2003-2004). Her work has been included in group shows at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, throughout the United States, and internationally. Cohen lives and works in Los Angeles.]