Contemporary Art Books & The New York Public Library, Description of Project: NICOLE COHEN, 2023
Edition of 5, 2 Aps
The video produced in 2023 features a black and white historical photograph of the New York Public Library, with the book from the paintings coming to life in the animation overlay. It starts as a slow pace, and transforms over 3:00 min on a seamless loop, and goes wild with books flying off the shelves into a life of their own.
The project in turn deals with the life of the books, a personification of objects, the meaning and feeling of the books, and how the history is static (the photograph) but the books continue to fluctuate based on their content. It began as a personal project relating to a private collection of Contemporary Art books but has evolved into a relatable portrait of the context of archives as a type of portraiture.
I created paintings of the books that will be featured on the cover of the Bellevue Literary Review, Spring 2024 along with a documentary about the project.
I work mainly as a video artist, I decided to animate the books into a personified video of the life of the books, overlayed onto a historical image of the New York Public Library.
– Nicole Cohen
