Public Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Emma cc Cook, and the artist’s second presentation with the gallery. Across two floors of the gallery’s expanded space, Cook’s paintings and sculptures skillfully craft a narrative that speaks to the complexities of American history and the collective memories embedded within. Cook often combines monochromatic paintings on canvas with insertions of walnut sticks, textural variations, and intriguing thematic ventures that are inspired by rural American West landscapes and the broad discourses surrounding identity, history, environment, and erasure. In this exhibition, Cook emboldens her paintings with bulbous vibrant...
Public Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Emma cc Cook, and the artist’s second presentation with the gallery. Across two floors of the gallery’s expanded space, Cook’s paintings and sculptures skillfully craft a narrative that speaks to the complexities of American history and the collective memories embedded within. Cook often combines monochromatic paintings on canvas with insertions of walnut sticks, textural variations, and intriguing thematic ventures that are inspired by rural American West landscapes and the broad discourses surrounding identity, history, environment, and erasure. In this exhibition, Cook emboldens her paintings with bulbous vibrant color fields, highlighting the tension, violence, and beauty in this history. With latent pervasiveness, the round and oval forms halve the landscape into smaller and smaller parts denoting an interruption of the vanishing-point. These forms map framing systems into the vista of the monocultural farm, occluding her historic use of the narrative flotsam composed as vignettes. Reminiscent of Baldessari's dot painting, with his device of anonymity, Cook harkens to an amendment or indemnification of the original, acting as a thwarted investigation or a lingering spectre, tethered like a balloon, caught over the horizon.
