James Cohan

Federico Herrero sees paintings everywhere, from street curbs and traffic signs to the painted trees and stones which proliferate in his native San José, Costa Rica. It is this examination of how color, shapes and signs define the urban environment that is vital to his practice as a painter. Herrero is best known for working on an operatic scale, regularly exhibiting immersive, site-specific wall paintings, monumental canvases, and cast concrete sculptures. In striking contrast, these intimately scaled canvases and monotypes create a rich, distilled vocabulary that explores the sensory and pictorial properties of Herrero’s painting and image making.

James Cohan is pleased to present a selection of work by Nam June Paik. Our online viewing room showcases three of the artist's iconic sculptures, Main Channel Matrix, Music is Not Sound, and TV Service Robot. With a prolific output that included manipulated TV sets, video wall installations, live performances, single-channel videos, and global television broadcasts, Paik balanced a Utopian philosophy with a technical pragmatism and subversive sense of humor, creating artworks that drew on chance encounters between ideas, the object and the public. Paik emphasized that it is the artist's role in society to re-envision technology in the service of culture. His ideas resonate now, more than ever, as we conduct much of our lives virtually, partaking in Paik's vision of a "global village."

James Cohan is pleased to present STEPS, an exhibition of new work by Grace Weaver, on view from July 15 through September 12 at 48 Walker St and September 13 at 291 Grand St. The exhibition will span both of the gallery’s locations, with a body of new paintings in Tribeca and a selection of the artist’s drawings in the Lower East Side. This is Weaver’s second solo exhibition at James Cohan. Both exhibitions are accessible by contactless appointment only.

James Cohan is pleased to present STEPS, an exhibition of new work by Grace Weaver, on view from July 15 through September 12 at 48 Walker St and September 13 at 291 Grand St. The exhibition will span both of the gallery’s locations, with a body of new paintings in Tribeca and a selection of the artist’s drawings in the Lower East Side. This is Weaver’s second solo exhibition at James Cohan. Both exhibitions are accessible by contactless appointment only. Please visit our website, call +1 212 714 9500 or email info@jamescohan.com to book an appointment.

Visit our online viewing room to explore the provocative world of XU ZHEN®, whose sculptures intervene with cultural assumptions and taboos within a context of exchange between contemporary China and the west. Manipulating visual cues tied to western expectations of Chinese art and commerce, the artist’s works engage with—and often playfully transgress—the value systems and economic forces that shape perceptions of history and social difference in a globalized world. This online presentation has been organized on the occasion of ETERNITY vs EVOLUTION, the artist’s current retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. The viewing room features a video tour of the exhibition led by Peter Johnson, Curatorial and Programs Coordinator.

“A reset button for the universe pressed only once.” This phrase is from the artist Katie Paterson’s poignant Ideas series. Nowadays, we wonder if only. Robert Fludd, the 16th century Hermetic philosopher, was among the first to identify the relationship between the microcosmic and the macrocosmic. Fludd expressed the impulse to qualify and quantify the inherent link between man and the universe. As we now grapple for our place in the larger order of things and reckon with the contemporary moment, we have curated Cosmologies, a selection of our artists' approaches to matters of the universal. Participating artists include Simon Evans™, Mernet Larsen, Josiah McElheny, Lee Mullican, Katie Paterson, Matthew Ritchie, and Fred Tomaselli. In our online video feature, Josiah McElheny speaks about his Observation series, the visionary singer June Tyson, and the possibility and necessity of finding, seeing, and creating worlds unlike our own. A portion of the proceeds from sales will go toward the Food Bank for New York City.

Explore Firelei Báez's solo exhibition of new paintings in our online viewing room. Overlaying paint onto large-scale reproductions of found maps and documents, Báez casts diasporic histories into an imaginative realm, re-working visual references drawn from the past to explore new possibilities for the future. The artist populates historically-loaded representations of space with change-making creatures—whose hybrid forms incorporate folkloric and literary references, textile pattern, plantlife, and wide-ranging emblems of healing and resistance—to present fictional alternative universes. In our online video feature, Báez speaks about the exhibition, her ongoing use of found book pages, and mythologies ranging from the Dominican ciguapa to the black Atlantis developed in the techno music of Drexciya.

We are delighted to share A Lotus in a Sea of Fire, an exhibition of new work by Tuan Andrew Nguyen, in our online viewing room. Nguyen’s work explores the power of storytelling and the folklore traditions of diasporic communities. He extracts and re-works dominant, oftentimes colonial histories and supernaturalisms into imaginative vignettes. The online presentation features a video interview with the artist sharing his thoughts on the exhibition and the making of his film The Boat People.

James Cohan is pleased to present Volume, an exhibition of new work by Federico Herrero at the gallery’s Lower East Side location, on view from January 17 through February 23. This is Herrero’s second solo exhibition with James Cohan. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Friday, January 17 from 6–8 PM. The works in the exhibition range from intimately scaled canvases and immersive, site-specific wall painting to cast concrete sculptures the artist refers to as volumes. Responding to the existing architecture of the gallery, Herrero reveals latent interstitial shapes and forms that materialize elsewhere into the sculptural objects.​ The exuberant intensity of the canvases and installations gain a new dimension when juxtaposed with the volumes. In Herrero’s distinctive, light-filled palette, planes of pigment settle into irregular shapes. These forms, coupled with the wall painting, map the visitor’s path through the exhibition. Collectively the paintings, volumes and installation create a rich vocabulary that explores the sensory and pictorial properties of painting.

James Cohan is pleased to present "El asesinato cambia el mundo / Assassination changes the world," an exhibition of new work by Teresa Margolles, on view from January 10 to February 29 at 48 Walker Street. This is the artist’s debut solo exhibition at James Cohan. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist on Friday, January 10 from 6-8 PM. Teresa Margolles investigates the social and aesthetic dimensions of conflict by infusing artwork with material traces of violence and loss. For this exhibition, she has created a new body of sculpture, photography, and installation that contends with the underlying causes of death and ongoing trauma on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. Assembled in collaboration with communities affected by violence, the objects on view examine shared experience to underscore mutual accountability within a context of commemoration and collective mourning.

James Cohan is pleased to present James Cohan: Twenty Years, a special group exhibition celebrating the gallery's twentieth anniversary. On view from November 1 through December 20 at James Cohan's Tribeca and Lower East Side gallery spaces, the exhibition will feature new or historical works by every artist in the current program. James Cohan will host opening receptions on Friday, November 1 from 5-7 PM at 291 Grand Street and 6-8 PM at 48 Walker Street.

James Cohan is pleased to present James Cohan: Twenty Years, a special group exhibition celebrating the gallery's twentieth anniversary. On view from November 1 through December 20 at James Cohan's Tribeca and Lower East Side gallery spaces, the exhibition will feature new or historical works by every artist in the current program. James Cohan will host opening receptions on Friday, November 1 from 5-7 PM at 291 Grand Street and 6-8 PM at 48 Walker Street.