Duality
On view April 24 - June 11, 2021
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Tour Duality - a walk-through of Duality with Gallery Owner Marc Gurton and Gallery Director Caitee Hoglund
Duality - A Closer Look - artist talk with Jon Cowan and Lindsey Kocur
Above left: Lindsey Kocur, detail from Cloud Line, acrylic, ink and volcanic sand on canvas; above right: Jon Cowan, detail from Dark Halo 4, oil and vinyl paint on canvas
13FOREST Gallery is pleased to present Duality, an exhibition featuring the work of Jon Cowan and Lindsey Kocur. In this series of paintings and drawings the artists use dichotomies between naturalistic landscapes and architectural elements to explore spiritual, temporal and environmental themes in the world. Though the artists diverge from each other visually, they both propose that the world as we perceive it has an essential but obscured order to it.
In Cowan’s meticulous landscapes, geometric forms hover in the background with seeming incongruity. Despite their air of scientific examination, the paintings and drawings in this series have a deeply personal context – Cowan’s experience of losing religious faith. After leaving the church, Cowan had to rebuild a new life without religion, and through this work Cowan seeks to create images that connect with the viewer as deeply as objects of religious devotion, but without a specific ideology. Inspired by underlying geometry and hierarchies once used to convey divine meaning in Christian art, Cowan recalibrates convention to convey a broader sense of spirit and mystery in the world. The contrast between scientifically rendered landscapes and mathematically perfect forms creates a tension between what is known and the unknowable, evoking a sense of awe independent of religion.
For several years Kocur focused her work on the built environment and idealized interior spaces. During a year quarantined at home, however, she shifted her attention to landscape with a heightened appreciation for wide-open spaces. In this latest body of work, Kocur exposes her own painting process and addresses themes of time, order and the environment. Departing from the precision of her earlier work, Kocur begins each painting with an acrylic-wash technique that creates unpredictable forms. From there she builds out her landscapes with realistic components, detailing, and often layers of impasto paint. Architectural, human-made elements emerging from freeform backgrounds give the impression that Kocur’s landscapes are both generating and dissolving, emerging from chaos and then reverting. The tenuous state of her work parallels our world in the midst of climate change, where the future of human life is constantly in question.
In Duality, Cowan and Kocur harness the power of contradiction to create dynamic, engaging work. Each artist skillfully uses the opposition of natural and geometric elements to arrive at themes that are both personal and universal.
Preview Duality
Tour Duality
Duality - A Closer Look
About the Artists
Showing for the first time at 13FOREST, Jon Cowan relocated to Boston after a decade in New York. Born in 1982 in Temple, Texas, Cowan attended The University of Texas at San Antonio where they earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006. They participated in numerous exhibitions, including shows at Simuvac Projects, Gray Contemporary, Ortega y Gasset Projects, The Parlour Bushwick, c2c projects, Ventana 244, Good Naked, and TSA New York. Cowan lives and works in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Lindsey Kocur holds a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She currently lives in Allston, Massachusetts. Kocur’s art practice centers on observing characteristics of the natural and built environments and translating them into inventive spaces through mixed media paintings, drawings and installations. The resulting images present unattainable worlds, devoid of the human figure, combined with moments inspired by meaningful places. Tactile materials link these imaginary renderings with physical locations. Thick, extruded paint, at times blended with black volcanic sand, is reined in by meticulous, clean lines that impose a sense of control. Elements within each artwork reference architecture and other human-made attempts to alter the natural world. Curated plant-life interacts with the architectural forms that often frame, or are framed by, pristine landscapes. The color palettes convey multitudes, from Utopian optimism to urban and industrial stresses. Manipulated perspective separates these depictions from reality and pushes them into abstracted realms. Idealistic, escapist visions appear precariously balanced. Moments of authenticity give way to fantastical structures seeking to capture the qualities of the natural world in implausible and often impossible ways.