Deville Cohen

Born in Tel Aviv in 1977, lives and works in New York.

Deville Cohen received his KHB in 2007 from Weiseensee Kunsthochschule in Berlin, Germany and his MFA from Bard College in 2010. He has exhibited internationally, including solo shows at Nowhere Gallery in Milan, Italy and tor111 in Berlin, Germany.  In 2010, his work was featured in Greater New York at MoMA PS1, The Company in Los Angeles, and Lesley Heller Workspace in New York City.  In November 2010 he has a solo exhibition at Braverman Gallery in Tel Aviv.

Working with elements of theater, sculpture, cinematography, and collage,  Cohen uses people, objects, and Xerox reproductions to depict a narrative or describe a set of activities. He is interested in the ephemeral, jury-rigged qualities of the logics that shape our understanding and appreciation of the real, and the ways in which an individual interacts with his or her surrounding environment, both imagined and physically present.

Cohen attempts to disconnect objects and places from their cultural meanings by reducing them to two-dimensional Xerox reproductions: this reduction changes their materiality and scale and isolates them from their “natural environment.”  In this process, they become symbols as well as sculptural objects.  These representations become the primary material for the construction of his sets and, in that sense, the work explores the possibilities of paper as a sculptural material while simultaneously serving as a carrier of a printed image.