ArtSlant - Amy Cohen Banker

Amy Cohen Banker, Summer Wine, 2013, oil pastel and oil on board, 16 x 20 in.

 

AMY COHEN BANKER

Amy Cohen Banker makes paintings, photos, drawings and media art. By emphasizing aesthetics, Banker wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation.

Her paintings sometimes radiate a cold and latent passion. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, she creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position.

Her works urge us to renegotiate painting as being part of a reactive or – at times – expressive medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, she seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.

Her works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. Amy Cohen Banker currently lives and works in New York. For more please visit: www.amycohenbanker.com