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Orly Cogan Page 1 | Biography |
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Publications Review from Chicago Sun Times Friday June 23, 2006 Cogan images expand view of fabric of life BY MARGARET HAWKINS Gallery Glance In her second one-woman show in Chicago, Orly Cogan continues to dazzle and amuse with her playful and sometimes mildly sexy embroideries on vintage fabrics, but this time she branches out in subject matter. Cogan's basic practice is ingenious. She salvages old fabrics, such as tablecloths and dresser scarves decorated in the prim floral motifs of yesteryear, and then adds to these designs her own embroideries of contemporary figures that are usually nude and sometimes erotically charged. While the earlier work tended to be spare in composition and felt more like self-portraiture, the new works are parties by comparison, crowded with figures from Cogan's life and imagination. Her boyfriend, her father, her friends and their dogs mingle with storybook characters to create a kind of public intimacy. Cogan's homey materials and techniques introduce a witty domestic twist to scenes that otherwise would just seem frankly sexual. InCogan's world of willful imagination, though, Alice in Wonderland, in her petticoats and Mary Janes, can hang out innocently with handsome naked guys, and it's all good. This is a post-feminist fairy tale Cogan is working out -- anything goes as long as girls are in charge. What is so engaging about the work is the cheerful way Cogan mixes things up, collapsing time and history as she appropriates the past for the present. By co-opting the labors of some earnest homemaker from an earlier era, Cogan honors her handiwork as she incorporates it into the blithe frolics of the 21st century. The idea is great, perfect even, but in practical terms some pieces work better than others. My favorites are those that most fully integrate the efforts of the past with Cogan's own embroidery. Such is the case in "Searching for My Prince," in which Cogan's frog-kissing nudes are designed into an existing symmetrical floral border. Rather than burying the past, this work builds on and embroiders it. Orly Cogan. Carl Hammer Gallery, 740 N. Wells, Chicago; (312) 266-8512. Through July 8, 2006. |
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International contemporary art
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