Raphae?le Cohen-Bacry        
ROSACES (ROSES)                                   
Sept 12 – Sep 23, 2022

As an installation, Rosaces brings together several large assemblages of cardboard and metallic paper, each evoking the round stained-glass windows that famously grace the walls of Gothic Cathedrals (known as rosaces or rose windows). Hanging at a distance from the gallery walls, the suspended forms twist and move independently, reflecting light off of their colored metallic surfaces, as well as bending that refracted light into colors projected onto the walls behind. As visitor’s move around the gallery display, different shades and brilliances appear and disappear into their field of vision, highlighting the ephemerality of the experience. The repeated rosace form developed by Cohen-Bacry combines their studio-based research around the material possibilities of working with recycled cardboard and earlier field work conducted with stained-glass windows while living in Paris. Taking the rose window out of its original religious context, the artist proposes to use them instead as emblems of a modern yearning for balance and harmony in the face of chaos and uncertainty. In its openness, both as a porous form and an infinite shape, the rosace is, and has always been, a metaphor for the circle of life, with no beginning and no ending. To emphasize this openness, each rosace references a different, though related, symbolic pattern, from the main rose window of Notre Dame de Paris to the Taoist yin/yang to the mathematical infinity sign to the Buddhist Dharma wheel to the mystic Flower of Life.

Los Angeles-based painter and mixed-media artist, Raphae?le Cohen-Bacry, was born and raised in Paris, France, where she completed her Doctorate in pharmacology and a performing arts degree from l’École de la Rue Blanche, with additional training in painting and printmaking at Les Ateliers Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris and La Grande Chaumie?re. Her own artistic practice also carries deep roots in art history, including a significant influence from prominent European movements like CoBrA and Tachisme, which excite her due to their lyrical abstraction that leaves plenty of room for intuition and non-premeditation. Since moving permanently to the United States in 2003, Cohen-Bacry has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at Encino Terrace Gallery, Torrance Art Museum, Alliance Franc?aise, the Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque, Coastline College Art Gallery, ArtShare LA, Fathom Gallery, and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.