Ripped Terre Verte is an exhibition of Arthur Cohen’s new abstract oil paintings. In these large works, Cohen has created an original painting language using vibrant, sometimes eccentric, color and juxtaposing smooth shapes and surfaces against raw, rough ones.

“Now Arthur is making “new abstract paintings,” as distinct from his taut, minimal abstractions of the 1970s and 1980s. The new ones have a similar muscular energy, but are more painterly. They evolved from a series of increasingly interpretative paintings of bulls. The paintings no longer allude to bulls, or to any one thing, condition, or state of mind.”

“The paintings are luminous.  Alongside the dark oily forms are swoops and stains of lustrous, brilliant hues. Pink, violet, pale mint, pearly gray, blazing red, clear opaque green. Cool blues that are digitally unreproducible. “I scraped the cobalt turquoise to make it more translucent and brighter. The orb in the center is Prussian blue. I wiped it down, and that mystery color showed up.” 

“That mystery color.” His process is improvisatory and intuitive. When asked about a shape that looks pointedly unfinished, Arthur says, “that painting needed a torn edge.” Another one “just happened.” He has let go of a lot of parameters. He’s watching out for something he hasn’t seen. ‘“

- excerpts from the catalogue essay by Leslie Roberts

Arthur Cohen is a New York City based painter with a career spanning more than 50 years. His work is included in private and public collections, such as the Whitney Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art. He is a professor emeritus at CUNY Queens College. He has taught at various institutions including Princeton University and Pratt Institute. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, such as the _Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, The National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, NYState CAPS Grant and numerous awards from the PSC CUNY Research Foundation.

The exhibition will be available to view through April 28th, Monday – Friday, 10am-5pm by appointment only. To visit the exhibition, book an appointment here. The artist has produced a catalogue for the exhibition containing an essay by Leslie Roberts.