Grayscale

Deville Cohen’s video work and photography describes a fantastic world where office supplies replace the components of the natural world: lids and markers hang from the trees as if they were ripe fruits, clips are collected from the ground as they were gravel or other organic materials, and photo paper builds a new space making us take another look at our familiar reality.  Men in high heels, decorated with a head covering, or, alternatively scraps of printed paper depicting tractors demonstrate a fantastic relationship  with mundane objects, which seeks to challenge the original meaning. The work is projected through a huge curtain made out of strips of black paper attached with clips. Inside the screening space, carpet with the same clips located in the center invites the viewer to sit and gaze. Cohen combines elements of theater, sculpture, film and collage, which creates an image that is simultaneously simple and complex, real and imagined, familiar and strange. The video work has a narrative with three acts that situates the office supplies in the theater of absurd in gray colors, and infuses new life to these everyday objects. Cohen’s Series of photos _L_A_C_E_, creates double meaning scenes which emphasize the gap between reality and imagination. Cohen uses different materials in different ways than intended to create a highly stylized urban landscapes. Products converge into two dimension reproductions which cuts them from their cultural significance and isolating them further from their reality. Born in Tel Aviv, 1977. KHB Graduate, Weiseensee, Berlin (2007) and MFA Bard College (2010). Past exhibition includes:  Nowhere gallery, Milan and tor111, Berlin.  In 2010, Deville exhibited in Greater NY, PS1 and Lesley Heller Workspace, New York. Lives and works in New York

Curated by Adi Gura