Bruce Cohen at Louis Stern Fine Arts

Cohen's master skills makes his oil on canvas creations look as realistic and fresh as a high-quality photography. His exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts is running now until June 16, 2012

Butter-colored tulips careen towards the open window, their faces turned outwards in hopes of locating sunlight.  But, in Bruce Cohen’s serenely unreal landscapes, gunmetal blue clouds swarm the sky.  Cool, pre-storm light falls through lavender-framed windows.  The sun has gone missing and the unnaturally elongated tulip stems curve and stretch in vain.

In keeping with the Old Master tradition of still life, Cohen infuses commonplace objects with a heightened reality.  Coffee cups glow atop a pile of books.  Each canvas features a supremely refined palette and carefully crafted composition.  Yet, plums mysteriously happen to be the same rosy shade as the stripe on the tablecloth and anemones bloom from an almost unreasonably tall glass vase.  A meticulous play of light and shadow throws the objects into sharp relief and slices into the background planes as if the painter’s brush had become a surgeon’s blade.  Though the subject appears to be simply representational, the illusion created by the painting is surreal.

Though flowers ‘bloom’ in every image, these are still life paintings with a hard edge sensibility.

Article information and images are courtesy of: www.LouisSternFineArts.com