Yvette Cohen: More Than One Way To See Things

Yvette Cohen, Building a Square No. 31-2, 2024, Acrylic and wood dowels on shaped canvas, 25 x 32 inches
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Artist’s Statement:

The square symbolizes stability, strength, balance, and peace of mind. Artist Yvette Cohen explores these connotations in her “Building a Square” series, which consists of over 40 paintings that experiment with the laws of geometry and physics. On display in this exhibition is a selection of works from this series, which are each made of acrylic paint and wood dowels on shaped canvas. Despite mounting flat on the wall, the canvases evoke a sense of sculptural depth, expanding one’s perception of space beyond the frame. Boldly colored and shaped, these sculptural paintings blur the line between two-dimensional and three-dimensional art. There is more than one way to perceive Cohen’s “Building a Square” paintings, and their simplicity and ambiguity are meant to engage and spark curiosity in viewers.

Artist’s Bio
Yvette Cohen lives and works in New York City. She was born in Egypt, raised in Paris and Montreal, and received a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she studied with Guido Molinari. After moving to New York, she continued her education through classes at the Art Students League of New York, the School of Visual Arts, and seminars at the Whitney Museum of American Art. For a year she worked in lithography at the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Cohen’s work has been exhibited in group exhibitions in New York City at Frosch & Co. and Ki Smith Gallery. She has had two site-specific installations in New York City; one at Cassina, the renowned Italian design company, and one at Basta Pasta, the acclaimed Japanese-Italian restaurant. In 2018, Ellen Fagan of Odetta Gallery in Bushwick brought a selection of the sculptural paintings from the Cassina installation back to life, along with Cohen’s more current work in her expansive gallery. Cohen’s work is in private collections in the United States, Switzerland, Taiwan, France, and Japan.