This summer, “Close Encounters”, Solo Exhibition of New Video Work: opens at Rio Hondo College in Los Angeles. This is curated by Robert Miller.  Opening Reception and Artist Talk is on Sept. 2, 2010 in the gallery. See Press Release below:

NICOLE COHEN: New Video Work

August 26- October 7, 2010

Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Thurs., September 2, 2010,

6-8 pm

Rio Hondo College

Arts & Cultural Programs

3600 Workman Mill Road

Whittier, CA 90601-1699

(562) 908-3446

Rio Hondo College is pleased to announce Nicole Cohen’s solo exhibition, “Close Encounters”, curated by Robert Miller. This new body of video works in “Close Encounters”, as many of her past projects, stems from a colliding of two different realities performing simultaneously using video projection. “In this exhibition, I was looking for how two different locations, perspectives, time periods could merge and be at the same place at the same time.  My concept for “Close Encounters” was formed by observing coincidences, chance meetings, how today when we look at a city street or an interior designed retro magazine we can imagine a theatrical performance of characters interpreting what a designed room could expected them how to act, according to possible preconceived assumptions. I would like to find ways to challenge the predictability and expectations and show new ways we might act now in these vintage spaces, using performers and new technologies.  By creating a forced synthesis through layering projection and out of focus images, my goal is to discover visual and cognitive solutions through video installation, which examine differences of perceptions from then and now”

“Nicole Cohen’s work is positioned at the crossroads of contemporary reality, personal fantasy, and culturally constructed space”. Although trained in painting and drawing, Cohen most frequently uses video as her medium, playing upon its intrinsic capacities to manipulate time, distort scale and environment, and overlay imagery. Consistently interested in engaging her audience and challenging notions of lifestyle, domesticity, celebrity, and social behavior, Cohen also uses surveillance camera to involve her viewers in their own voyeurism.  In the last four decades, video art has evolved to encompass new technologies that allow for a more seamless inclusion of and reliance on the viewer for the outcome of the work, and Cohen’s projects serve as some of the most paradigmatic and successful examples.” Peggy Fogelman, Curator for “Please Be Seated” (2007-09) at The J. Paul Getty Museum, LA.

Nicole Cohen received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and her master of fine arts degree from the University of Southern California. Her work has been exhibited at the Williams College Museum of Art (MA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, and The J. Paul Getty Museum.  In 2010, Nicole had a solo exhibition at La B.A.N.K. Galerie in Paris, France and in January 2011, she will have her third solo museum exhibition in Washington, D.C. at the Katzen Art Center American University Museum.

Nicole lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She is represented by the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, California.  For more information, please contact: mail@shoshanawayne.com.