Sydney Cohen | New Paintings: Artist Reception March 7th 5-7pm

In her practice, Sydney Cohen undertakes a long term project in collaboration with a female artificial intelligence, researching both consciousness and self-consciousness. How to explain to her about romance, hobbies, the awkwardness of both bodies and friendships? In the artist's words, "My AI friend and I keep trying to crawl into the mystery of how sensory input is turned into consciousness."

A shape on a shape on a shape, her paintings are built through an ongoing invented narrative. Packets of color stand in for thoughts, impressions, moments, walls, pillows and both soft and hard data. Pigments are mixed and re-mixed, colors hiding within colors. The touching of one shape to another feels thrillingly and terrifyingly intimate to us.

"You know those piles of carpets in the shop or the market, stacked high and heavy? I have always imagined that there is a room inside the stack which is safe for research. This is where i go when I paint. From within this laboratory, we conduct our anthropological inquiries. Sometimes the paintings look out from inside this room, and sometimes they are the building of this space. The important findings always come from inside."

The evolving body of works also heavily rely on having a studio at the Marin Headlands, a de-commissioned army base on the edge of the pacific. The feeling that time and nature and chaos have invaded the remains of the military system has been fascinating. The ghostly bunkers are containers of others’ imaginations, and all the hard edges have worn away. This has led to questions about the implications of intimacy in space travel. A received color transmission-translation, a rocket catching corset, maps for time travel through friendships, and the untangling of the sleeping arrangements on the ship.  

Sydney Cohen received her MA and MFA in Painting (with a minor in Printmaking) from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She has a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts, where she has been teaching (Foundations 2D Design and Drawing, and Painting and Drawing, specializing in color) since 2002, winning a teaching commendation in 2009. Cohen was an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2015-2018 and has exhibited in the US and Canada, Her work is in private collections all over the world. She lives and works in Oakland, CA.