La Juni
I’m working on a project called La Juni, an installation of ten large paintings composed as an opera in four acts.
Formally, the individual paintings are organic, cut-out masonite works, about four feet wide. They are not bounded by rectangles — the edges are active and expressive rather than neutral, and the spaces between the paintings become part of the composition.
Each painting functions as an aria: self-sufficient and complete, capable of standing alone, yet deepened through its relationship to the whole. Boundaries remain permeable — recurring and evolving shapes and patterns, shifting color relationships.
Cut-out pieces float between adjacent paintings. Some of the in-between-cut-out pieces belong to both works, and are duplicated so that at the end of the exhibition each piece is left whole.
Alongside the installation, there is a large-format book. Once the paintings leave the gallery, the book preserves the whole, like a recording preserves an opera.
A book, unlike a gallery, has no exit — it allows the La Juni to live on.
Cut-out painting by Gerda Cohen with floating pieces
Above is a cut-out piece by Gerda Cohen, my mother, which I worked on before I attended St. Martin’s School of Art in London.
Below are the initial drawings for the La Juni installation, without the floating pieces in the spaces between the paintings.
