Cora Cohen at Jason McCoy

Won from the Heath, 1997

Copper, oil, pigment, on drop cloth

79 x 82 in., Courtesy Jason McCoy Gallery

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In her densely layered paintings, Cora Cohen carries on the spirit of Abstract Expressionism. Her works display a surprisingly heterogeneous assortment of materials and methods of handling them. In the canvases exhibited here she employs oil and acrylic paint, thick pools of translucent polyurethane, crinkled paint skins, and dustings of copper, graphite and marble. These are variously spattered, brushed, dripped, stained or sprinkled on the canvas.

The resulting paintings frequently evoke associations with the natural world, calling to mind the gritty surface of sandy earth, the roil of agitated water or the burst of distant flares in the night sky. However, the complexity of the layering, the density of the surface and the subdued palette create an effect very different from the lyricism of nature-inspired Abstract Expressionists like Joan Mitchell or Helen Frankenthaler. Cohen’s paintings have a darker tone. Rather than soar aloft in an eruption of light and color, they feel weighed down by earth and matter.

This is so even when the canvases suggest permutations of the heavens. Terrains Vagues,for instance, has a cosmic quality. Bright flashes of hot pink and yellow over a pinkish-gray ground suggest a disturbance in the sky. Heat and light seem to stream outward in a centrifugal explosion. In one part of the canvas, an application of polyurethane has congealed to create a reflective pool, providing a contrast with the surrounding matte texture. The work has a sense of depth and movement, but it is undercut by the frozen quality of the dense surface. Similarly, a small painting titled Sphinx centers on a hand-shaped spill of shiny polyurethane on a thick brown ground. Pigments caught inside the translucent form swirl like eddies passing over a rocky stream bed. Yet again the motion is arrested and locked in place by the glassy skin which encases it.

While these paintings suggest interplays of light and darkness, it often seems that the latter has the upper hand. In Won From the Heath a massive black-purple form dominates the canvas. A giant cloud appears to be passing over the earth, and horizontal drips spread across the surface like sheets of rain.

Many of Cohen’s works seem to suggest the conquest of fluidity by stasis. However, in this case stasis does not signify order but a kind of petrified chaos. In the end, these paintings express a cold, dark sensibility, making us think of things born of the light of a dying sun.

—Eleanor Heartney