Bruce Cohen | "Bruce Cohen 2020" Explores Pandemic Interiors at Berggruen Gallery

California artist Bruce Cohen presents his tenth solo exhibition with the Berggruen Gallery, titled “Bruce Cohen 2020.” The show, on view by appointment only through Jan. 9, features the artist’s most recent work: a collection of paintings featuring interior spaces.

Cohen’s subjects of interest for the works, dated from 2017 to 2020, include floral still lifes, explorations on the play of shadow and light, and views framed in windows. Many of the paintings were produced during the pandemic shutdown, which led the artist to explore concepts such as the passage of time and the domestic setting in deeper ways.

Inspired specifically by artists like René Magritte, the work is heavily surreal, while also blending classical still life painting principles. The paintings are both hyperreal and dreamlike, vivid yet cinematically soft and familiar while also utterly without place.