Solo exhibition at Revolt Gallery featured in Taos News

"Dance Cadaverous," a solo exhibition by Rachel Gisela Cohen, will reflect the beauty, surface and excess of contemporary culture, moving between the natural and material world. Based in New York City, Cohen uses paint, pigment, mica, recycled textiles, and fabrics to create sequin-encrusted chromatic paintings, using an intuitive and emotive process. Using a bandsaw blade, she employs a mode of automatic drawing while carving the initial shape of her support before dyeing and painting canvas, which she fastens over the hand-carved form.

Cohen’s art has been displayed nationally and internationally and she has received fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, COPE NYC, Montclair Art Museum, and most recently, the Revolt Gallery in Taos. She has also been credited for creating an educational partnership between UNM-Taos and SVA. She has facilitated multiple online and in-person residencies at the SVA for UNM-Taos students, including two full scholarships to the summer program in New York City.

Featured in Galerie Magazine's "These Are the Buzziest Artists Discovered at New York Art Week" by Paul Laster

"Highlights included Rachel Gisela Cohen’s shapely paintings layered with sparkly cutout fabrics in an immersive three-person show organized by Cohen and Abby Cheney"

Featured in Two Coats of Paint, Scene + liked: Spring/Break Art Show NYC by Sharon Butler

Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly pulled together another Spring Break Art Fair, this one on a floor at 75 Varick Street in Soho. The theme, INT./EXT. (or, as I like to say, interior/exterior) was pretty expansive, but they provided interesting reading lists and films to inspire applicants. The press release kicks it off by calling for a “PB & J of tactility and intangibleness, a plea for Landscapes, Streetscapes, or works of Anatomy all that work against their cartographic instinct, mapping more than meets the eye, elevating what could be a chart or graph into the realm of Art; for the blending of Reality and Fiction, True and False, or for works stuck in-between mind and body, Dream and Waking: Surrealism, Expressionism.” In other words, a showcase for, well, all the trends in contemporary art. We made it to the press preview, and managed to take a few snaps. Congratulations to everyone involved for another extravagant group of ingenious shows.

"I also loved the plush purple carpeting and shiny metallic walls serving as a beautiful backdrop for colorful relief sculptures and mixed media textile canvases in “Interplay,” a three-woman show curated by Rachel Gisela Cohen and Abby Cheney featuring their work and that of Yen Yen."

Read the article here:

news.artnet.com/market/spring-break-art…

Rachel Gisela Cohen

Understory

March 18 - April 6, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, March 18, 6 - 8pm

37-39 Clinton Street, New York, 10002

New York, NY- Space 776 is pleased to present a solo exhibition by New York City-based mixed-media artist Rachel Gisela Cohen. The exhibition features Cohen’s recent works created from 2019 onwards.

The understory is an in-between rainforest layer with a damp and dark environment that rivals the bright outer canopy and foundational forest floor. In Cohen’s work a variety of materials including flashe paint, sequined fabric, recycled beads, and faux crocodile skin come together to create a theatrical and playful world; one that expresses Cohen’s fascination with beauty as well as her criticism of excess in contemporary culture.

Cohen draws references from aposematic organisms she observed in the Costa Rican rainforest as well as from drag and theater culture. Her collages of bold colors and decorative materials creates a composition made in response to her personal memories and experiences. As a whole, Rachel Gisela Cohen’s sequin-encrusted chromatic abstract paintings become an ecosystem of their own where a metamorphosis of various forms takes place. Relying on the unexpected coupling of paint and fabric, Rachel Gisela Cohen creates a hybrid medium that comments on the coexistence of natural and man-made environments.

Rachel Gisela Cohen is an artist, educator, and independent curator based in NYC. She has shown her work nationally and internationally, exhibiting at The Spring Break Art Show 2020, Armenia Art Fair, Pierogi Gallery’s The Boiler, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and Hunter College Art Galleries. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, COPE NYC, and the Montclair Art Museum. She received her M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute and a B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts from Drew University. Currently, she teaches as an Artist Educator at the Museum of Arts and Design and manages the School of Visual Arts Artist Residency Programs in New York City.

https://news.artnet.com/market/spring-break-in-finnish-embassy-1471207

www.artspace.com/magazine/news_events/e…

Click here to learn more about the 30 artists and writers who were awarded Fellowships for 2019.

Rachel Gisela Cohen
Changing Room
May 3-May 25, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday May 4th 6-9pm
Sweet Lorraine Gallery
183 Lorraine Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY

Click here for Interview~>

Clicke here for more information.

www.yngspc.com/artists/2018/07/rachel-c…

I am excited to announce that I have been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Equity Fellowship through Vermont Studio Center! This is my portrait from my residency in 2015, looking forward to returning as a fellow!