Nicole Cohen
Crystals, 2015
MP4, 3:00
Video courtesy of Shoshana Wayne Gallery and UNPAINTED- The Platform for Digital Art
On view in the E. Craig Wall, Jr. Academic Center in the Spring of 2021.
Please note: All buildings on campus, including the Wall Center, are only open to Davidson students, faculty, and staff due to the pandemic.
Q&A with the Artist
Gallery intern Cole Thornton ’21 asks Nicole, “Crystals shows beautifully crafted gemstones and roses orbiting like planets in a jewel-toned galaxy. How does the relationship between the natural and human-made function in this piece?” She answers in the video below:
Artist Statement: Crystals is a video art work of a vintage clipping of an interior of cabinets of curiosity (a science room in the 18th Century in France, for exploration of the natural world).
The image of the room is two-dimensional and appears as though you enter into it. Layered and integrated into the image are natural objects, i.e. Roses, gems, diamonds, and more, that are made in 3D animation, and float and travel through space that appears more like a dream state or meditation room. The room derives from a French interior book of a palace in France that still exists. The contrast of natural objects to digitized ones reveals human needs to connect with nature and even design it by mimicking it with technology.
A galactic synthesis between the past and the present interplay showing a fusion of time periods and how we once observed objects of nature by touch and now we are also viewing them through a digital lens. My work questions the relationship of the static and the dynamic literally by placing movement on top of a still image, while also asking what happens when you mix two different realities. Past and present work together to inform the viewers of where the technology has been and where it potentially could go.
Nicole Cohen received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County of Art, Williams College Museum of Art, La B.A.N.K Galerie in Paris, France, at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Autostadt, Wolfsburg, Schloss Britz in Berlin, Germany, American University Museum at Katzen Art Center in Washington D.C., Wave Hill Public Gardens and Cultural Center in the Bronx, and The Museum of the Moving Image in 2019. “Her 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 the surveillance camera to involve her viewers in their own voyeurism. Her work projects serve as some of the most paradigmatic and successful examples.”, Getty catalogue 2009.
Video courtesy of Shoshana Wayne Gallery and UNPAINTED- The Platform for Digital Art.