Gabriel Cohen

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

Gabriel Cohen is an artist, author and curator currently based in Los Angeles, CA. He is an alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA), the Vermont Studio Center residency program, and the Alternative Worksite Artist Residency. His work addresses themes of loss and distance and their relationship to various notions of scale. Using the logic of the ‘pataphysician, Gabriel Cohen intentionally conflates discursive fields in order to formulate the questions that drive his work. Important developments include: (mis)perceiving the large scale entropic nature of the universe as a form of psychoanalytic loss; (mis)understanding classical myth systems and their formal markers as a history of the development of semantic meaning; and (mis)taking the development, standardization and contemporary usage of infrastructure systems (particularly those of radio & roadways & ballon frame homes — technologies which constrict time and space) as a personal hagiography of love and desire. During Cohen’s research process he engages in the cataloging and reproduction of photographs, writings, construction diagrams and other ephemera which for him bear a certain psychological weight. Through the process of reproduction Cohen often teaches himself new techniques and working methodologies. These, in turn, are made into iterative processes unto themselves, which drive his physical artistic production, be it writing, sculpture, drawing, or media work. Most recently Cohen has been...

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