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Features

James Cohan Features is a series of short documentaries that takes us inside the studios of our artists.

Shinichi Sawada: Messengers featuring Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director of the New Museum.

Film by Greg Poole. Produced by James Cohan, 2023.

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screen grab from Messengers, feature film

Shinichi Sawada: Messengers

Hear from Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director of the New Museum in New York as he explores Messengers, an exhibition of new and important work by Shinichi Sawada in our latest video feature. While rooted in traditional techniques, Sawada’s ceramics possess an otherworldly beauty, situated in a language of his own making.

Image inside Firelei Baez studio

Firelei Báez: Americananana

Go behind the scenes with Firelei Báez in her Brooklyn studio as she discusses the makings of Americananana, her recent solo exhibition at James Cohan.

Kathy Butterly working in her studio surrounded by jars of pottery glaze

Kathy Butterly: Color In Forming

Our latest Feature explores Kathy Butterly's new exhibition, Color In Forming. From her East Village studio, Butterly discusses her intensive artistic process, the importance of scale, and the formative power of color in her most recent body of work.

Eamon Ore-Giron using a ruler on one of his paintings

Eamon Ore-Giron: Music & Sound

Explore Eamon Ore-Giron's interest in music and how the two musical tracks produced to accompany his exhibition, relate to the paintings on view in The Symmetry of Tears, on view at James Cohan, 48 Walker St, from May 1 through June 5, 2021.

Eamon Ore-Giron: The Symmetry of Tears

Eamon Ore-Giron: The Symmetry of Tears

This Feature centers on Eamon Ore-Giron, whose exhibition The Symmetry of Tears is on view at 48 Walker St through June 5, 2021. Multiplicity and simultaneity are central to Ore-Giron’s wide-ranging practice. Across his interconnected pursuits in painting, music, and video, he synthesizes formal histories to explore the visual, auditory, and experiential possibilities of cross-cultural influence.

Josiah McElheny: Libraries

Josiah McElheny: Libraries

This Feature explores Josiah McElheny's exhibition Libraries, on view at our Lower East Side gallery from April 17 through June 12, 2021. In Libraries, McElheny continues his ongoing investigation of ways that concepts of “the infinite” have been translated throughout history into images, and how these pictorial structures connect to societal values of diversity, individuality and interconnectedness.

Photo of Michelle Grabner

Michelle Grabner

Michelle Grabner is known for her broad perspective developed as teacher, writer and critic over the past 30 years. In this episode, Michelle Grabner walks viewers through the making of the paintings, wood-panel and ceramic works on view in her latest exhibition at James Cohan, as well as her site-specific installation at the Art Preserve at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI.

Photo of Naudline Pierre

Naudline Pierre

In this brief interview, watch Naudline Pierre discuss her practice from her Brooklyn studio. Pierre examines the rich imagery of the paintings on view at MoMA PS1 in This Longing Vessel, the three-person capstone exhibition of the 2019–2020 Studio Museum’s Artist Residency program.

Photo of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian surrounded by her sculptures

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Mirror-works and Drawings (2004 - 2016)

Over six decades, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1922 - 2019) investigated the intricate geometries of her Iranian heritage, reconfiguring traditional craft techniques to explore the philosophical, poetic, and perceptual possibilities of interlocking primary forms.

Photo of Yinka Shonibare CBE

Yinka Shonibare CBE: Earth Kids

In this video, Yinka Shonibare CBE discusses the connection between the history of colonial domination and humankind’s domination of the natural world and exploitation of its limited resources, as these themes relate to his recent solo exhibition Earth Kids.

Photo of Mernet Larsen

Watch Mernet Larsen discuss her nearly six decade-long career as a painter and the processes and inspirations behind her latest exhibition at James Cohan. Drawing from influences that range from the non-objective geometries of Russian Constructivism to Bunraku puppet theater and Indian miniatures, her works take compositional cues from art of the past as springboards for uniquely spatial figure-paintings that speak to the anxieties of the present.

Photo of Fred Tomaselli

Since the early 1990’s, Fred Tomaselli has created multimedia paintings which explode in mesmerizing and hallucinatory patterns. In this video, Tomaselli discusses the latest body of work presented in his solo exhibition at James Cohan. These new paintings marry Tomaselli's resin paintings with his ongoing New York Times collages.

Photo of Trenton Doyle Hancock

Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Moundverse, Chapter 2

In this film, artist Trenton Doyle Hancock confronts issues of race and power. By harnessing painting, graphic novels and art history, he builds a world around his avatar Torpedo Boy in an ongoing narrative of superheroes and villains.

Photo of Trenton Doyle Hancock in front of one of his paintings

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Something American

In this episode, Trenton Doyle Hancock discusses the materiality at play throughout his practice and his experimental self-portraits.

Photo of Trenton Doyle Hancock in front of one of his paintings

Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Exchange

Watch Trenton Doyle Hancock discuss the genesis of the Exchange paintings, which feature his superhero alter ego Torpedo Boy facing off against the buffoonish Klansmen that populated Philip Guston’s paintings.

Photo of Grace Weaver painting in her studio

Grace Weaver: STEPS

In this episode, Grace Weaver brings us into her Brooklyn studio while working in quarantine, sharing her diverse influences and discussing the psychological complexities of the female figures in her recent body of work.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

The final Feature on the 2020-2021 NXTHVN cohort follows artist Vincent Valdez as he discusses the creation of his monumental painting Just A Dream (In America), 2021. This grisaille painting, nearly eight feet tall, depicts an exhausted Chicano boxer sitting in the corner of a ring flanked by a coach and sponsor, both just out of view—a metaphor exposing the hierarchies of American society.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

The newest Feature on the 2020-2021 NXTHVN Artist cohort follows Ilana Savdie, as she discusses her depictions of the human body in her work. Savdie describes the human body as "an inconvenience" in its failure to conform to culturally-imposed standards and restrictions. Savdie embraces this defiance, emphasizing the abjectness of the human body through texture and color, in an effort to transcend the constraints of physical form.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

Our latest Feature follows Jeffrey Meris as he and NXTHVN Curatorial Fellow Claire Kim connect Meris’ ongoing routine of “self-care Saturday” and his studio practice. Started amidst the chaos and violence of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID-19 pandemic, Meris’ practice involved setting aside time each week to pursue activities related to his own mental and physical well-being, whether that was cooking, exercising or caring for plants.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

Esteban Ramón Pérez

In our latest installment of Feature videos on the NXTHVN 2020-2021 fellows, we follow Esteban Ramón Pérez, an interdisciplinary artist from the Los Angeles area. Raised in his father's upholstery shop, Ramón Pérez incorporates materials from his youth, including leather and embroidery, to create monumental paintings such as Como La Flor (Toreado), 2021.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

Our latest Feature on the 2020-2021 NXTHVN Fellows centers on Allana Clarke. In this video, watch Clarke discuss her sculptural works built of cocoa butter and hair bonding glue, materials that are not only related to Black personhood, but have historically been used to force fragmentations of self as a means of subscribing to Western standards of beauty.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

Alisa Sikelianos-Carter

Our second Feature on the 2020-2021 NXTHVN Fellows centers on Alisa Sikelianos-Carter. In this video, Sikelianos-Carter examines her multi-media work Meet Me on The Other Side (2021), through the lens of her role as a world-builder and mythology-maker.

Josiah McElheny: Observations

Josiah McElheny: Observations

In this video, artist Josiah McElheny discusses his Observations series, including the work Seven Observations for June Tyson. These paintings are abstracted depictions of the deep night sky, comprised of a dense accumulation of glass elements seamlessly inserted into a wood-panel surface.

Federico Herrero

Federico Herrero

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. In this video, Herrero discusses his use of photography and 'found paintings' from his San José home-studio, highlighting the tangible connection between the artist's environment and practice.

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity

Claire Kim & Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack

Watch Claire Kim, NXTHVN Curatorial Fellow and curator of Un/Common Proximity, and Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, NXTHVN Studio Fellow discuss their respective experiences working alongside the 2020-2021 NXTHVN fellowship cohort in the midst of a pandemic, and the making of Un/Common Proximity.

In this video, Firelei Báez speaks about her latest 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.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen: A Lotus in a Sea of Fire

Tuan Andrew Nguyen: A Lotus in a Sea of Fire

Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s work explores the power of storytelling through video and sculpture. In this video, Nguyen discusses the themes of inherited history and communal memory present in his exhibition A Lotus in a Sea of Fire and the making of its centerpiece film The Boat People.

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