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