Project Description

Zero

Artist: Deville Cohen | Curator: Summer Guthery
January 25th, 2014 – March 2nd, 2014

Deville Cohen premieres, ZERO, his most recent video inspired in part by the television crime drama The X-Files. His interest in idiosyncratic systems of relations and understanding leads to taking closed narrative forms, like the television show structure of a crime scene, investigation and resolution, only to twist it apart. That recognizable structure breaks down, becomes abstracted and is exhausted, revealing the fragile qualities of the materials, devices and logics he uses. Influenced by theater, sculpture, cinematography and collage, he creates abstract psychic dramas that are clearly handmade, but nonetheless visually and structurally complex.

For the first time, at Disjecta, Cohen will have the opportunity to create a large sculptural installation in which to screen the new work, placing the viewer directly into his imagined scenes.

press for Zero:

“Deville Cohen’s ‘Zero’ at Disjecta plays with time, space and expectations: review”, Oregonian (February 11, 2014)

Art Review: Deville Cohen, Zero, Willamette Week, (February 12, 2014)

Additional production support and residency provided by EMPAC/ Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Jaffe Fund for Experimental Media and Performing Arts.

About the artist

Deville Cohen was born in Petach-Tikva, Israel, 1977, and lives and works in New York, NY. He studied sculpture at the KHB in Berlin, Germany, from 2002-2007 and received his MFA from Bard College in 2010. His work was shown in the Marjorie Barrick Museum, Las Vegas; Stage Presence, SFMoMA, San Francisco; Greater New York, PS1, Long Island City, NY; Stagecraft, University of South Florida Institute for Research in Art; BOMBbash, Marlborough Chelsea, NY; Foxy Production, NY; and POISON, Louis B James Gallery, among others.

About Disjecta’s Curator-in-Residence Program

The Curator-in-Residence program provides an opportunity for emerging local and national curatorial talent to develop and expand the scope of their practice. During their one-year residency, curators engage a broad range of artists to create a series of exhibitions in Disjecta’s dynamic 3,500-square-foot space. By showcasing new work and fueling collaborations between artists, curators, and viewers, Disjecta seeks to impact new audiences and intervene in the larger contemporary arts dialogue.

Summer Guthery, MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, was selected as the 2013–2014 Curator-in-Residence.