New Works is proud to present Gabriel Cohen’s first solo exhibition in Chicago: On The Construction of the Heavens.

I see us crowning massive mountains, on the back of titans and turtles, at either ends of dangling golden chains, atop massive trees beyond endless oceans or within meteorite – impact craters hurtled millions of miles through space. On The Construction of the Heavens exists in between the conception of maps for the body based on the heavens and maps of the heavens based on the body. How do we delineate the boundaries of an experience not yet lived but clearly suggested? Certainly the mirror is two-ways when mapping the heavens.

In a sparsely multilayered environment Cohen’s work manages to deliver materially without compromising the diagrammatic nature of his concerns. With a tactile approach to making he marks the empirical relapse of systems of belief from different origins and their return/departure from the human body. Pencil drawings, meteorite debris and rubber; radio transmitters, high-density foam and other fabrication-shop paraphernalia create an idiosyncratic amalgam. These personal idioms and material elements that live between the fabricated and the handled stand in contention with (and occasionally mirror) vocabularies from a local scene that turns global and viceversa--aren’t we all under the same sky? –he mumbled¬– while the boat hull slid through the wet sand.

Gabriel Cohen graduated from Rhode Island School of Design (BFA 2017). Currently he lives in Chicago.