Cynthia Cohen

Cynthia Cohen’s humorous and unsettling paintings draw from multiple sources—her native Argentina’s rich artistic heritage, her medium’s history, and her interest in kitsch. Her compositions frequently feature naturalistically rendered animals. These creatures are not based on studies of animals in the wild but on decorative trinkets and children’s toys. In a recent series of paintings, she focused on the beautifully plumed cockatoo, albeit in the form of porcelain decorative objects. Isolated against a neutral background, each bird appears as though it could be based on a living animal, until closer inspection reveals that the feathers possess too much sheen and the body is too perfectly modeled. For Cohen, such objects demonstrate our strained, and often strange, relationship with nature.