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Make yourself at Home © 2007 Nicole Cohen

Nicole Cohen
Make yourself at Home

3 January – 23 April 2008
“Art Wall on Third”
The Art Collection, 3rd Fl
Mid-Manhattan Library
40th Street @ 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871
Mon-Wed 9-9, Thu-Sat 10-6

3 – 31 January 2008
“Art in the Windows”
On view day and night

Make yourself at Home is a new project of photographs and installations created by the internationally known artist Nicole Cohen.  This exhibition, produced specifically for “Art Wall on Third” and “Art in the Windows” exhibition series at Mid-Manhattan Library, shows her ongoing interests in seeking out historical interiors to explore issues of identity in relation to architectural spaces.  Lisa Dorin, the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, will join Cohen for an “Artist Dialogue” on Monday March 10th at 6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor.  The two exhibition series are curated by Arezoo Moseni.

Artist Statement
For this exhibition, I was inspired by vintage magazines and reference books from the 1950s that seem very outdated and could allow us, through contrast, to reveal how we have changed our expectations through design. In the chosen interiors, the time period seems to use interior design to script certain ways of acting that were appropriate then. I am interested in challenging the historical periods and looking at how we now interpret these spaces today. I have taken two interior photographs from Better Homes & Gardens and Home Beautiful magazines from the 1950s, and have videotaped performances and then superimposed them onto a still photograph, using video projection and Adobe Illustrator.

One video installation will be exhibited in the 5th Avenue south window case. In the second window, there will be a light installation that explores these interiors through illumination and surveillance. Upstairs at the Art Collection, viewers encounter a series of seven photographs, which complement the installations and are video stills from the performances that were filmed in my studio. The digital stills and collage-like pictures show the actors jumping on the furniture in a video as they are layered appearing very ghost like as they perform into the actual advertisement from the past.