RLWindow
Nicole Cohen
Library (Donald Judd’s)
RYAN LEE is pleased to present Library (Donald Judd’s), a 2014 black and white video by Nicole Cohen. While visiting Donald Judd’s library and studios at La Mansana de Chinati/The Block in Marfa, Texas, Cohen noticed that although the rooms have remained undisturbed by people since the artist’s death in 1994, natural forces have intervened. Sculptures have shifted in the heat, loose papers have stirred, and subtle dust has settled onto the furniture. The windows, when propped open, render the space vulnerable to dramatic rearrangement by a storm or gust of wind that might sweep across the complex.
Library (Donald Judd’s) lays animation over an archival photograph of Judd’s library, taken while the artist lived and worked there, to imagine possible natural interruptions of the room’s preservation. Newspapers begin to fall softly onto the fixed scene, as if snow. The papers then collect on the floor and drape over chairs before they ultimately flutter and billow according to a dynamic choreography of their own, and the library, captured at one particular historical moment, maintains its stasis underneath.
Since 2000, Cohen’s work has projected video overlay onto photographs of historical interiors, such as period rooms. The image incorporated into Library (Donald Judd’s) is sourced from Donald Judd Exhibition Catalog (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1988), page 125, © Rob Wilson, 1986. It is reproduced with permission.
Nicole Cohen received her BA from Hampshire College in Amherst and her MFA from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Although trained in painting and drawing, Cohen most frequently uses video as her medium, playing upon its intrinsic capacities to manipulate time, distort scale and environment, and overlay imagery. She has exhibited at the American University Museum at Katzen Art Center in Washington, D.C.; Autostadt, Wolfsburg; Brooklyn Museum of Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; La B.A.N.K Galerie, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Schloss Britz, Berlin; Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica; Wave Hill Public Gardens and Cultural Center, Bronx; Williams College Museum of Art; and traveling exhibitions in Asia. She has lived in Los Angeles, Berlin, and New York.
RLWindow is a dedicated exhibition space featuring video, installation, and performance art designed to engage High Line visitors, viewable from the elevated public park at 26th Street. Utilizing the gallery’s position overlooking the High Line and its visibility to more than 5 million yearly visitors, RLWindow is a platform for innovative, experimental, and collaborative projects by international contemporary artists, including both invited and gallery-represented artists. RYAN LEE invites you to join the conversation by tagging #RLWindow and #ryanleegallery in social media posts. Find us on Instagram @ryanleegallery!
