on Charles Cohen - Perception in a Digital World

Charles Cohen, analogtime02, 2003, Digital Type-C Photograph, 40"x52"

Charles Cohen, Untitled, 2011, archival pigment print, 20"x27" ed. 10 plus 2 AP

Charles Cohen was born in New York and earned a MFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design. As an artist, Cohen’s work focuses on the reality of human perception. His photographs in “That” and “About Face” are produced for the viewers reaction the unfamiliar  profiles of everyday objects rather than to glorify the objects themselves. In a similar way, through erasure of the subject of each print in “Buff” and “analog time”, Cohen forces his audience to replace expected visual cues with their own memories, and in the process provides them a glimpse of into their own psyche. In a more subtle way, “Standard Double” comments on the nature of the perception of self, through his orchestrated presentation of doppelgangers in TV sitcoms.

Charles Cohen, Still Shot from "Standard Double", Untitled, 2002,Type-C Color photograph, 20"x30"

          In thinking about Cohen’s work, the aspect which most intrigues me is his concept of “erasure”.  Much of Cohen’s work plays with the notion of omission. Looking at Cohen’s art, I am reminded of how selective perception really is. If we're disinterested in information, the mind shunts out all the garbage down neural-trenches so deep we seldom recognize they exist. This process occurs so quickly and unconsciously people often surprise themselves when they cannot repeat a sentence they just finished. All the unwanted details of our lives are filtered from our minds, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. Through omission Cohen’s work tests the perceptual filters of its audience, and so we find ourselves visualizing in his work only the things we desire, expect, or fear most. This concept of filtering is all the more relevant in a world where the internet allows us to censor information through search engines that are just as much about removing the things we don't want to see as they are about showing us what we desire.

 Charles Cohen, pic_071, 2001 archival ink print, 10"x15"

          Cohen's work finds its strength in the ability to manipulate and utilize audience perspective in the basest way possible. The heart of Cohen's art is its ability to make the viewer acutely aware of his/her own point-of-view in a unbiased and disassociated way. The artwork itself clearly reflects back the viewer's own cognitive bias, and so (as with all art) each person sees in Cohen's art only the things that are most important to them. What makes Cohen's use of this bias distinctive is that through his work the audience is made actively aware that they only recognize what is significant to them within the piece itself.
          The mood behind Cohen's work is very personal and introspective, which perhaps lessens the opportunity for open discussion about the ideas he presents us with. I feel that presenting his concepts in a collaborative or participative way would only serve to further strengthen the impact of his work. Imagine, for example, an exhibition where before you enter you must select a color card and then fill out a short survey. Based on the results of this survey, the sections of the digital images in the exhibition that the survey results predict you will find distasteful or otherwise undesirable are blocked out forming a silhouette in the color you selected on your color card. If each participant in the exhibition has their color card visible, everyone in the room will know the things that (based on the survey) you find distasteful. In this way, you get the audience actively involved (and hopefully discussing) this notion of the filters that we place on our own ideas and how they affect our lives.