Antagony Opens at Tissue Farm: Oreen Cohen Brings Monumental Paintings and Sculpture to Confluence
Pittsburgh artist Oreen Cohen's Antagony, monumental paintings and sculpture, opens at Tissue Farm in Confluence with an artist reception Saturday, August 8, 5-8 p.m.
Clear a spot on your Saturday. This weekend Tissue Farm hands its walls over to Pittsburgh artist Oreen Cohen, and the work she is bringing to Confluence is not the kind you glance at and keep walking. The opening reception with the artist is Saturday, August 8, from 5 to 8 p.m., and the show, titled Antagony, runs through September 21.
So what is Antagony? It is a new series of monumental paintings shown alongside sculpture, and the whole thing wrestles with the friction between opposing forces. Tension and release, collapse and endurance, vulnerability and resilience. Cohen builds the work through an improvisational process of drawing, carving and layering, cutting broad charcoal gestures into dense, tactile surfaces until figures seem to emerge, dissolve and transform right in front of you.
The materials are half the story. Cohen works with reclaimed and salvaged stuff, salvaged house paints, household chemicals, marble dust, wax, charcoal, graphite and leftover studio remnants, slathered and scraped and built up into heavily worked surfaces. She leans into the chemical reactions and the way different materials fight each other, then follows those unexpected patterns to find her forms. It is raw, it is sustainable, and it fits the theme perfectly, opposing forces held in tension rather than tidied up.
Cohen is no lightweight. She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon and a BFA from the University at Buffalo, and she is known around Pittsburgh for large-scale public artworks in steel and glass, including installations at Wightman Park in Squirrel Hill and Emerald View Park. Her work has been backed by grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Heinz Endowments and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Getting a show of this caliber on the mountain is a real treat.
Tissue Farm, the espresso shop and gallery in the former Mountain Chevrolet at 446 Latrobe Avenue, is right in the heart of Confluence, the first Great Allegheny Passage trail town. Admission is free and the espresso bar will be humming, so come meet the artist, take your time with the work, and grab a coffee while you are at it.
Saturday, August 8, 5 to 8 p.m. We will see you there.