Oreen Cohen

Medium(s): Collage, Mixed Media, Painting, Sculpture

Summary/Artist Statement:

Trash, scrap metal and organic debris all contain their own dense and particular histories. Each found object used in my artwork is medium to translate the material language of our surroundings. The Cyclical processes in life, nature and industry are significant elements that resonate in my work. Through sculpture and painting I explore dualistic themes of the human role in the environment, particularly the relationship between creation and destruction, the material nature of existence, and the juxtaposition of the natural and the synthetic. In order to sculpt our own identity in the world, we are forced to recover, scrape together and assemble fragments of what we identify with in our surroundings to culminate into our being. I depict our human relationship and our necessity to adapt in changing habitats through metaphors and symbols found in existential and metaphysical philosophies, alchemy, mysticism, and poetry.
Through my process, objects once rejected become celebrated, examined, and reassigned new meanings when arranged into a hybrid combination of found objects. My concept is explored through gestures brought forth by the qualities of the found objects by combining the elements such as: drainage pipes, car parts, and other scrap metal vs. the natural: bones, mud, tree limbs, and dead birds. I reclaim and reposition an objects context by placing it under the art viewers’ eye of inspection. These actions shift the meaning and highlights the significance of a particular objects form and encourages the viewer to engage in a visual communication between the object and the self; allowing viewers their own point of entry into the work by offering an experience; to look and to contemplate.

Selected Artworks:

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