Sarah CohenPortfolio

20 rue de la Fédération93100 MontreuilFRANCE

E-mail : sarahcoh@gmail.comMobile : 0033 (0)6 84 46 76 00

Website : sarah.cohen@overblog.com

Sarah Cohen 20 rue de la Fédération 93100 Montreuil FRANCEMobile : 00 33(0)6 84 46 76 00E-mail : sarahcoh@gmail.comDate of birth : 19/08/1982

Personal work : sarahcohen.over-blog.com

I graduated first from the National School of Fine Art in Lyon and subsequently from the National School of Decorative Art in Paris where I studied Photo-Video. I live in Montreuil, and I am currently working in Le 6B, Saint Denis, where I am specialising in direct carving sculpture with natural and synthetic materials. I am passionate about representing a relevant expression of our body perceptions related to space, time and human mindness.

EXHIBITIONS

2018 Les Points et un point Vol 3, Group exhibition, K's Gallery, Tokyo.2018 The 4th Shoes box Exhibition, Ohtawara City Institute for Art Cultural-Studies, Tochigi, Japan.2017 Les 3xquises/6 ans, Collective exhibition with Les 3xquises, La Bellevilloise, Paris.2017 The 3rd Shoes box Exhibition, Ohtawara City Institute for Art Cultural-Studies, Tochigi, Japan.2017 Les Points et un point vol 2, Group exhibition, K’s Gallery, Tokyo.2016 Retour d’ombre, Personal Exhibition, Le Hublot d’Ivry, Ivry-Sur-Seine, France.2016 The 2nd Shoes box Exhibition, Ohtawara City Institute for Art Cultural-Studies, Tochigi, Japan.2016 Les Points et un point vol 1, Group exhibition, K’s Galerie, Tokyo.2015 Yes to all ! Collective exhibition with Les 3xquises, Galerie Treize, Paris.2015 Talents Boulonnais, Mairie de Boulogne-Billancourt, France.2014 Les 3xquises/3 ans, Au Fond Du Jardin, Paris.2013 Minimenta, Group exhibition, Point Rouge Gallery, Paris.2013 Dessins et bois gravés, Galerie Point G, Tulle, France.2012 1, 2, 3 Nous irons au bois, Le salon de Coiffure, Paris.2011 Dans cette maison, Event of Contemporary Art, the Divan Association, Le Vésinet, France.2011 Sculpture Exhibition, Art For Smile Gallery, Paris.2010 42 in Buenos Aires, Group exhibition, La Libre, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2009 46 sous la couverture, Group exhibition, Librairie-galerie Le Monte-en-l’air, Paris.2007 Tribute to Brancusi 2007, Collective Sculpture Exhibition, Romanian Embassy, Paris.

PRIZES

2007 Laureate of International Sculpture Competition called Tribute to Brancusi (with the National Monuments Centre, Centre Pompidou National Modern Art Museum and the Romanian Embassy), Paris.2007 Documentary making called Hôpital Somine Dolo, 7th Photographic African Encounters of Bamako, Blachère Fondation, Mali.

RESIDENCIES

2017 Drawing Residency in a Care Home with the collective Les 3xquises, Paris.2016 Brisons Veor Residency, Cape Cornwall, England.2007 International Sculpture residency, called Tribute to Brancusi, Parc de Sceau, France.

ARTISTIC PUBLICATION

2013 Drawings for the Annual Congress of Ecole de la Cause freudienne – Les 43e, Paris.2013 Fanzine SIC N°1, collective publication book and group exhibition, Le Cafe Des Artistes, Paris.

Open the pores of a skin and (stare through) let the eye pass

Beginning with materials of natural origin such as wood, stone or various organic elements, I seek to represent a circulation, that which is found in the body, in the elements, a transformation, that of organisms. These reveal a state of being in a given moment. The body is a whole world filled with fluids, colours and materials. Sculpting by direct carving, I seek to establish a relationship between my mental images and sculpted matter, like a photographer who observes the image reveal itself in the darkroom. The skin, the bones, the organs represent a place where I can modify the space, change the points of view, weave links, combine the inside and the outside as a whole. I tend to mix and push the limits of figuration to question what I think I know, starting from existing materials that already have a form, from a past existence. Like a subjectivity that spilts up and finds an alterity in a volume, allowing it to inhabit a place and a space. It is also a way to stop the time, to find an inking in a feeling that, through the sculpture, is made visible and palpable. The practice of drawing allows me to find another temporality of the gesture, more immediate and spontaneous whilst accessing the unexpected.

Îlots/Small Islands (series)

Resin, cuttlebone, paraffin and pigments, Variable dimensions2019

These small islands are sculpted by direct carving on several birch plywood panels, in which is floating a piece of cuttlebone. The original shape of the cuttlebones influence the shape of the island during sculpting it. The interior expand to the exterior. Resin is used as a fixing material that can stop the shape's evolution. As a photograph that reveal a precise moment.

Après la disparition/After Disappearance (series)

Resin, cuttlebone, paraffin and pigments, Variable dimensions2019

The cuttlefish bones are now whole, completely immersed in the resin. Colored with pigments and paraffin, they appear as a sunken landscape. Synthetic and natural materials are fixed together as if to stop the transformation process.

Ilôt / Small island

cuttlebone, paraffin, resin, wooden base3,3(H) x 13,3(W) x 19,6(length) cm2018

An exploration of floatation with mixtures of materials such as dry bones, paraffin and resin.The result forms a miniature landscape, an organic and synthetic island.

Débordement / Overflow

Paraffin, cuttlebone5(H) x 13(W) x 20(length) cm2017

This cuttlefish bone looks like a boat about to sink. Here the sculpture is like an image which is revealed in its bath, a form fixed in time, taken in its floating state.

Lay down, low tide

Brisons Veor Residency, one week in Cape Cornwall in England.2016

The Cape Cornwall let me do a sculpture in an unusual uge and open space. I began to shape a peace of wood, throuhg my perceptions and my feelings in that landscape. In between colours, skyline, stones and waves, I tried to report my immediate memories of the forms I could face by walkings. My feelings were to stand up between the ideas of death and birth, stones and water, past and future. The peace of wood was the only present I could think about. My every day process was to add a color related to my feelings and sculpt on it by direct carving. Every day I drawed like a skin erased by a new wided shape. At the end of the week I immersed the work in the square pool and the relief came because water could stop time running and reveal a final shape. Trough the water reflection this sculpture was able to take part of the landscape. I looked forward to reveal a presence in-between, a peace of body that will figure a memory of this land ending.

Images from a video

Inner #1

Carrara marble12(H) x 16(W) x 12(length) cm2016

An unknown form grows from within. It is a folded, growing organ that has no pre-established meaning.

Inner #2

Carrara marble24(H) x 6(W) x 6(lentgh) cm 2016

Petite(s) vague(s) / Small wave (s)

Steatite and black ink 10(H) x 20(W) x 20(length) cm2016

Through these little stones held in one hand, I worked the effects of materials and surfaces. The polished steatite reveals its colourful veins, the surface of the cork plinth is painted according to the texture of the granite, and the black ink marks the moment of a mysterious black rain.

Dernière ombre / Last shadow

video installation and wooden sculpturevariable dimensions2013 - 2016

By observing microscopic images of osteoporosis, the eye interferes with the growing and porous functioning of our framework. The shadow of the sculpture is filmed and projected on itself in order to restore a movement to what is fixed by the representation.

Personal exhibition, Le Hublot d'Ivry, 2016

Le Rêve / The Dream

Carrara marble10(H) x 10(W) x 20(L) cm2015

This sculpture inspired by the work of Emile Zola The Dream, is composed of several women's bodies that mingle to form one.

Voies / Routes

limestone (St Maximin)40(H) x 30(W) x 25(L) cm2013

Mass of limestone divided into multitudes of small irregular cavities that form a sinuous path. It is an open artery sometimes holed, crossed by shadow and light.

Coeur / Heart

Carrara marble35(H) x 25(W) x 24(L) cm2013

The heart is like a vase, a container divided into many blood vessels. Separated from other organs, it becomes an isolated body of muscle.

Coeur #1 / Heart#1

Stone massengis (marble limestone)57(H) x 22(W) x 30(L) cm2012

Coeur #2 / Heart#2

Stone massengis (marble limestone)112(H) x 57(W) x 48(L) cm2012

Isolated organs, these sculptures are like offerings that hold a balance despite their curved and unstable shapes.

Avant la chute / Before the fall

Wood86(H) x 100(W) x 10(L) cm2014

A series of four pieces of wood belonging to the same strain. Their positioning is variable depending on the exhibition space.

Involutive / Involution

Wood (ash), steel120(H) x 25(W) x 25(L) cm2011

In this verticality takes shape an "involutionary thrust" described in a text by Gilles Deleuze about anorexia.

Exposition Le Salon de Coiffure, Paris 2012

Mae Phosop

Wood (walnut of america)47(H) x 16(W) x 26(L) cm2011

The Thai legend of Queen Mae Phosop tells the story of a female goddess who turns into an indefinite amount of rice grains to disperse on all continents. It is a body that divides to feed. Through the medium of the direct carving, I wanted to transcribe the power of transformation of this femininity, as well as its dual activity: to spread and disappear.

L’Encontre / The Against

Wood (ash), 150 kg120(H) x 60(W) x 60(L) cm2007

Artistic residency in Saint Cloud Park.Winner of the International Sculpture Competition Brancusi 2007.

The question of the pedestal raised by Constantin Brancusi, the presence and the absence of a sculpture, I worked this tree stump as an initial context in itself: a base already formed when falling down during the storm of 1999. From this base-sculpture arises two contrary movements. How can a unity be recreated through these two movements?This sculpture consists of an architectural side with a perfectly horizontal cross section close to a table top. The other side accompanies and emphasizes an upward curve due to the pulling movement of its fibers. Its centre is burnt and sawn, generating a clear separation between these two states. Thus arise in the same volume these two contrary movements: that of the right and vertical trunk and that of a curve revealed by the storm.

Exhibition at the Embassy of Romania, Paris.

Drawings and collective work

L'Oasis / The Oasis

Mixed techniques on paperVariable dimensions2017

Drawing Residency in a Care Home with the collective Les 3xquises.

Composition of drawings based on site observations, workshop meetings with residents, and addition of photographic prints.

A Gesture (current series)

Mixed techniques on paperVariable dimensions2017

Following the residency in the Care Home, it is a work on gesture as a trace, prolonged and transformed by additions of details.