As in that moment

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

As In That Moment | Bernard Cohen

Flowers Gallery, London. 7 October to 30 November 2024

A review by Laurence Noga

Left: Sprayed Plum on Raw Canvas 1, (1963), egg tempera on canvas, 244 x 244 cm. Right: Generation (1962), egg tempera and oil on linen, 244 x 244 cm.

Accelerating the viewer backwards and forwards across time, Flowers Gallery’s current exhibition ‘As in That Moment’ presents a spatially complex layering of process, memory, and time. The show explores Bernard Cohen’s constantly surprising and painstaking methods and materials, examining how his techniques operate both structurally and optically through his ongoing relationship with technology and conflict, and his extraordinary ability with both geometric and organic structures.

Among the rapid advances in x-ray technology in 1961 was Japanese company Shimadzu’s development of the first remote-control x-ray system; a device that allowed us to see inside the body while minimising our exposure to radiation. Cohen’s superimposed techniques, with their successive layers of spray paint (in fact, the first work he made used spray paint) call to mind that sense of detection.

Like a network of neural connections, Cohen’s early painting builds a vast transparent space with a soft focus (mirrored spectacularly in the gallery floor). We are drawn into the containment and counterbalance between the sharply painted knotted linear structure (perhaps internal organs) and the way in which this hovers inside a cellular composition. A sense of radiation and fluorescence permeates the monochromatic properties of the painting, bringing a deep sense of ambiguity, as well as a focus on the monumentality of the space, and how it is compressed within a strange depth of field.

Sprayed Plum1 (above, left) engages our senses through the work’s sheer speed and automatic qualities; it was painted from two feet away from the canvas with an airbrush. Cohen holds our attention through its detachment in the execution, rendering us unable to comprehend where the line begins and ends. The continuous whiplash of linear action is accented by a furious scribbling towards the centre of the painting. Building a fluid and un-interrupted rhythm, Cohen references the curving, sinuous lines of the Art Nouveau movement. He uses the grid and density of the structure to indicate how he might build complex components within his later paintings, and also makes us feel that there is some kind of rule, or time limit, on how long the the work should take.

Untitled # (1963) has some of the hallmarks of Cohen’s earlier paintings. Like a woven knot, the composition interacts through clusters of painterly activity either side of the central horizontal dividing line. Exploiting both presence and process, Cohen’s virtuosity is demonstrated by his dazzling use of scale shifts and hidden grids. The colour choices operate from front to back, such as the scraping back of a vivid lime green to reveal a light red ground. Cohen re-emphasises his relationship with fluidity and continuity, developing a cool grey linear structure with its ten knotted tentacles, echoed by the larger movement of shadowy blackened viscous forms (partially sprayed, and partially poured) which shift across the black dividing line, allowing the poured areas of colour to coagulate and buckle slightly.

A cancelling-out of space occurs in Blue Burrow (1966). Materialising out of white vapour, the surface is built up in many layers. At first the painting feels like a map or island. But as you approach it, the subtle pink sprayed outline around the opening catches your eye. You feel tempted to climb inside this deep blue opening, which is like a portal to another dimension, calling to mind the recent science fiction series Stranger Things. Cohen feels ahead of his time. Each successive linear journey within the portal is produced through a systematic and finely tuned tonal pattern. The individual dots of colour reveal a highly-intensive creative process that has an element of endurance, and which identifies Cohen’s ambition to make a world that is not easy for the viewer to unlock.

Territory, painted in 1977-78, was inspired by Cohen’s many trips to New Mexico. He brilliantly combines the illusory visual space he encountered in the blistering desert temperatures, with the precariously balanced ecosystem of organisms, plant life, mammals and birds that he encountered. Everywhere in Cohen’s paintings are traces (paw-prints) of the desert’s inhabitants: mountain lions, Mexican wolves, black-tailed prairie dogs and box turtles.

Cohen’s trademark use of a bird’s-eye view to construct the composition brings a spectacular geographical relationship to the painting. The ground colours are scored through, perhaps with some kind of needle, to reveal the primed linen beneath. The work is divided into five shifting desert pools or oases, and the rotational pull of the different sections keeps the painting in a constant state of flux. The flatly-painted rectangles which contain the carefully painted paw prints are perhaps organised with specific colour locations in mind. Geometric and organic shapes collide and interact in a fragile environment that comments prophetically on man’s widespread interference with the landscape.

A Very Large Array and Moving Away were painted two years apart. They seem to indicate both a desolate silence, and the way in which we might communicate in the future. By the early 1990s Cohen had further elevated our viewpoint as an audience. He positions us in amongst the scale shifts and hidden grids. As much as we try to disentangle the movement and the impossibility of the composition, he re-emphasises the noise and anxiety, and the way in which this triggers our attention and brain activity.

In 1993, between the years when these two paintings were made, Tim Berners-Lee had produced the source code for the world’s first web browser and editor, calling to mind a print like Roy Lichtenstein’s Explosion (1976). Cohen builds a multi-directional interwoven structure. Moving Away overwhelmingly contrasts the layering of the components. Pastel tones are contrasted against sharper black and white circular patterns. Lattice forms create a depth of space, paws chase aeroplanes, and the embellishments and angles of incidence interact like several shots in quick succession.

The black and white painting initially captures our attention through its insistent use of spirals, grids and circles. The contrast works fantastically well. We notice a staircase structure that subtly splits the painting. Hundreds of tiny targets, like a depth charge in the way we communicate, activate the surface. Cohen’s research into Art Nouveau helps establish interlocking systems of order and chaos, adding another dimension, pushing the boundaries through the undulating asymmetrical composition.

Cohen points to the future through the past in Swarm, painted in 2004, which builds on the anxiety and terror of the Second World War and the subsequent global conflicts. Cohen constructs the painting from a bomb-aimer’s perspective. Strewn across the surface of the painting are spinning and dislocated aeroplanes caught within an octagonal web. Sharp jagged circles, with different scales, give the impression of explosions throughout a shattered landscape.The push and pull of primary-and secondary-coloured aircraft are glimpsed, falling or colliding through cross-shaped structures. You start to notice the shadows of blackened aeroplanes sinking to the bottom of the painting. It’s a gripping and deeply disturbing painting, which lingers in the mind.

Cohen’s breathtaking amalgamation of themes and approaches in his paintings establishes a highly individual footprint – a re-invention of a moment. I find myself thinking about an industrialised society, mechanistic and systematic in approach, but Cohen’s work has a personal, hand-made quality, which you notice in the edges and the the sense of detail. Sometimes bleak and disintegrated, very often completely mesmerising and visionary.

Laurence Noga 2024

Untitled #3 (1963), acrylic on canvas, 91.44 x 91.44 cm.

Blue Burrow (1966), acrylic on canvas, 241 x 342.5 cm.

Territory (1977), acrylic on linen, 137.16 x 167.64 cm.

A Very Large Array (left)(1977-78), acrylic on linen, 183 x 183 cm. Moving Away (right)(1992), acrylic on linen, 183 x 183 cm

Swarm II, (2004), acrylic on linen, 183 x 244 cm