exhibitions - circuits
CIRCUITS: Charles Cohan
April 3 - May 1, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 8
6 - 8 pm
Curator's Office is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of internationally acclaimed printmaker Charles Cohan. Circuits includes two bodies of work, Tracks and Peaks. The former includes muscular collagraph prints, each printed from 3 plates. The latter includes ethereal 24 color/layer screen prints.
Tracks
As in his former airport Terminal and Runway series exhibited in 2007, Cohan continues his
interest in typologies imposed by humans upon the land and researched Google Earth for aerial
views of his racetrack subject matter. He then visited racetrack websites to develop his
imagery for Tracks. The racetrack circuits are layered according to a particular season of races.
Among the races included in this exhibition are the 2008 FIA Formula One World
Championships, the 2009 MotoGP motorcycle series, the 2010 Rolex GRAND-AM season, and the
2010 Deutsche Tourenwagen Master season. The resulting mysterious tangle of lines evokes a
knot gone awry or a pile of unwound paper clips. In his labor-intensive process, Cohan admits
to a fascination with "the graphic overlapping of a specific typology of architectonic forms, the
simultaneous mapping of distinct yet coordinate information systems, the optical confusion
that occurs within the overlaying of images of a shared type, and the loss of the original amidst
the repetition of the similar."
Peaks
Cohan, who grew up in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington, also translates the
physical activity of mountain climbing to his art practice. According to essayist Jaimey
Hamilton, "The series represents Cohan's personal relationship to the mountains of the Pacific
Northwest. But he has chosen to commemorate his traverse on these mountains in an
interesting way. Instead of producing intimate sketches, he used topographical maps. Each
print is made of an accumulation of up to 24 incrementally smaller shapes of ink that each
represent eighty feet on a map. In these views we see no trademark cliff faces, no indication of
the unique geography of the land, no outstanding profiles from amazing altitudes. The exact
measurements and contours of the topographical survey actually obscure the identity of the
peaks." On view in the exhibition are the ghostly and delicate topographies of Mount Hood and
Mount Rainier.
This is the second solo exhibition of Charles Cohan's work at Curator's Office. Cohan received a BFA in Printmaking from California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is currently Printmaking Program Chair at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He will be included in the 2010 Doure Print Biennial in Portugal. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Silver Spring, MD, Curator's Office, Washington DC; 1708 Art Center, Richmond, VA; Art Link Gallery, Seoul, Korea; and the Biennial of Hawaii Artists at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. Internationally his work has been included in the Gyeongnam International Arts Festival and the Hey-li Printmedia Festival in Korea; the University of Capetown, South Africa; the Museum of Fine Art, Florida State University; Wayne State University Galleries, Detroit, MI; Purdue University Art Galleries; University of Minnesota; Chicago Printmakers Collaborative; Chicago Cultural Center, and the Piedmont Arts Center. His work is in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; New York Public Library, New York, NY; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI; Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI; Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Honolulu, HI; Kennedy Museum of American Art, Athens, OH; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Grinnell College Permanent Art Collection, Grinnell, IA; University of North Dakota Art Museum, Vermilion, ND; University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA; Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA; Fresno Arts Center, Fresno, CA; Florida State University Art Museum, Tallahassee, FL; Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS; City of Palo Alto Cultural Center, Palo Alto, CA; California State University, Long Beach, CA; Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA; and the State Art Museum of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Russia.
image above: Charles Cohan, MGP09.X-XVIII, 46" x 40", collagraph print, ed. of 1 + 1 AP, 2010