About, and an Art Talk on Color
While Yvette Cohen’s work is two-dimensional, she approaches it sculpturally. She creates boldly colored painting-sculptures that mount flat against the wall, extending perception beyond their physical dimensions. She lives and works in New York City.
Born in Egypt and raised in Paris and Montreal, Cohen received a BFA from Concordia University, where she studied with Guido Molinari. After moving to New York, she continued her education at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts, and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program seminars, and worked for a year in lithography at the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
Her work has been exhibited at Kentler International Drawing Space, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Frosch & Co, Ki Smith Gallery, and Odetta Gallery. She has created site-specific installations for Cassina and Basta Pasta in New York and attended a residency at the Nantucket Artist Association.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I use color and form to reinvent spatial language and disrupt assumptions. My work transforms flat surfaces into spatial experiences where geometric forms shift and stretch. Though I paint and draw, I think sculpturally, positioning each piece in dialogue with the space around it.
Simplicity and clarity guide my process, yet within that structure I explore contradiction: balance and disruption, precision and unpredictability. My shaped paintings, made with acrylic or oil on canvas and wooden dowels, mount directly on the wall without frames. Depth emerges from the flat surface.
Each composition is carefully constructed yet open to interpretation. By altering geometry and shifting angles, I invite viewers to look again and reconsider how space is perceived.
ATOA's 63rd Open Studio Three Woman Artists on Color featured Yvette Cohen. Organized by Monroe Hodder and moderated by Barry Kostrinsky. 6/28/2021