Accola Griefen Gallery

Nancy Cohen scavenges, accumulates and reconfigures the discarded detritus of daily life: tiny perfume bottles, a patterned plate, a blue mesh bag. Cohen also fabricates forms which when combined with her found objects shape the visual vocabulary of the sculptures, large-scale installations and experimental paper-based works that make up this exhibition.

Cohen’s work addresses the extreme balancing act that contemporary life requires. Human and environmental frailties are set against the power of the natural world - to alter, threaten, destroy or simply decay. For her installation, P (n,k) Combinatorics, Cohen has covered the gallery walls with cast glass and cement forms that represent enlarged cellular structures but also resemble unearthly botanical life. From scooters drenched in pools of blue and black to floating glass forms that capture the light of water and the movement of waves, all of Cohen’s work suspends time and mark moments of precarious exchange.