The first exhibition of this West Coast showcase in a new national chain is devoted to a celebrated figure from the Chicago Monster School. A large number of recent paintings and ten constructions make a splendid introduction for a serious American Surrealist. The earlier paintings feature nude female figures in arrangements of a dream-like nature. The surfaces are worked with great variety from thin pigment, through heavy texture to virtual relief modeling. In one series the female figures run through an amusement pier atmosphere in which they are continually fractured and fragmented by light, mirrors and architectural modulators. Cohen’s color is clear and singing. The form is more closely related to Picasso than ever before. One great nude, titled Hera, metamorphoses into a face formed by breasts, navel and pubic area, a la Delvaux. This surrealist metamorphosis is an important aspect of Cohen’s art. He often uses the fracturing of planes, as in mirror reflections, for the same purpose. At his strongest in the constructions, he simply glues various sections of anatomy to mirrors and mirrors within mirrors to obtain a constructive version of the same vision. The incidental reflections, sometimes upside down, provide the shifting dynamism the artist seeks. A pair of “wall studies” utilize a kind of futurism that repeats a form in ever changing variations, like a Boccioni speeder, but with more to hold one’s interest.
—Gerald Nordland
