Opening Season: Abstraction and Landscape Part III: Cora Cohen at Greene Naftali

Small Space, 2012, oil on linen, 29 x 32 inches

The first painting in this knockout decade survey Cora Cohen: A Decade: 2012-22 at Greene Naftali.

She must have used a marble dust or water absorbent gesso, because the surface was so matte the blue shape looked collaged as if the paint and surface were one. Flat and matte to an infinite degree, one I would have liked to achieve in oils but never could.

If I Weren't, 2012, oil on linen, 67 x 69 inches. 

This relates to Curtain 8 Black, 2013, Flashe, graphite, and pigment on linen, 69 x 9 inches (on gallery website linked above). It also overlaps in Louise Fishman's vertical strokes in the late work, with the hint of a grid, but over time each artist's unique mark becomes more distinct.  When I knew Cohen in the 1990s, her paintings were dark, impasto, and dense with glitter. Whether heavy oil or watercolor, she was always innovating, out in front.

Terrain Vague, 2022, Flashe and watercolor on linen, 40 x 58 inches

Was this named after Mira Schor's brilliant essay Figure/Ground in her groundbreaking book Wet (1997)?

Detail of Terrain Vague. The surface almost like pumice, absorbing the watercolor instantly.

Portrait of an Artist, 2022, Flashe and watercolor on linen, 59 x 39 inches

Where painting and drawing truly fuse. Two Coats of Paint's Cora Cohen obituary quotes her saying, “I have continued working on paintings one at a time, often printing the basic structure of earlier works onto primed linen, then working back into that printed armature directly, introducing conflicting scenarios. I do have a notion of what I want my current work to be, how I want it to present itself. I want to make a painting that is non-finite, ambiguous but at the same time rather serious and non-ironic, a painting one might not notice as a painting. One might walk by it as one does a wall or an unremarkable tree, a method of turning failure into a compelling act.” –Cora Cohen, 2022, NYC"

DETAIL

We close with the ethereal Veronica's Veil, 2022, acrylic, colored pencil, Flashe, and watercolor on cotton duck, 61 x 59 inches, and some details. It's hard to write words about this painting, which foresees (in my experience) the desire to pour and paint transparently together. 

 

Opening Season: Abstraction and Landscape Part II: Friedel Dzubas at Lincoln Glenn

Juicy, boisterous paint from Friedel Dzubas in The Slow Unfolding: Friedel Dzubas' Final Abstractions, through November 8th at Lincoln Glenn. Link here: https://www.lincolnglenn.com/exhibitions/38-the-slow-unfolding-friedel-dzubas-final-abstractions/works/

Some details of the prior painting--beautiful opaques and transparents together

Also hardened chips of paint among the exciting brushed areas. 

Amidst the maelstrom one uncovers vapor...

Two beauties as well as pulp paper works (that are painted on).

The exhibition covers a decade, similar to Cora Cohen's survey at Greene Naftali, here, 1980-1989.

I believe this is 1983, similar to his early studio-mate Frankenthaler--each harvesting a language for abstraction.

 

Opening Season: Abstraction and Landscape Part I: Cynthia Lin at Satchel Projects

StoneRoots 5770 InvBluGr, 2025, 60 x 48 inches, in Cynthia Lin's solo exhibition Strange Twin at Satchel Projects. For accurate color and press release visit https://www.satchelprojects.com/cynthia-lin

StoneRoots 5770 InvBluGr is a photographed landscape turned vertically. The upturned shoreline mirrors human bodies reflected within cultural and political shifts both solid and dissolving. Lin, a Taiwanese-born, long-term New York resident, instinctively recognizes translation's displacements. Her work encompasses the multiple dislocations, from landscape to climate change, that increasingly turn things sideways.

BoulderStoneRoot5777PinkAquaShimmer, 2025, 54 x 50 inches

Acrylic is swapped for oil in the new works. The soft, repetitive charcoal strokes in earlier drawings of skin now form small, linear brushstrokes compiling networks of texture. Color is painted in simultaneous contrast, forming volumetric bodies that dissipate into the marks.

Overturned5717 InvPinkIceBlue, 2025, oil on panel, 20 x 24 inches

A landscape assembled from the many photos Lin takes on the lake. We imagine the relaxation of kayaking on the water, gazing at reflections. Yet a wing-like form flays open, overturning Soutine's carcass of beef into reposed body, shell, or shroud. The form is both solid and ephemeral, beckoning future paintings.

StoneRoots5770 InvTurqBl, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

Channeling Ingre's portrait of Monsieur Bertin as a supplicant, branch hands reach toward us  beneath a divided head. Staring into the paint yields odd associations, including Viennese painters Gustave Klimt or Dagobert Peche in how patterns form the body. Yet the form remains a landscape turned sideways; we don't forget this dual nature, or that we're caught between.

BoneBranch5007, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 11 inches

As the first chronological painting, this painting becomes a presiding spirit. It presents a compression revisited in the most recent works (not included here). A bucolic scene of river and wood re-envisioned as a ganglia of internal organs shows how easily the physical becomes codes. The codes renew and amplify shared experiences. Yet at the same time these paintings are complete as paintings. For one generation, they represent disintegration, while for another, construction.