ETHAN COHEN GALLERY
New York / Beacon, USA

Ethan Cohen Gallery

For VOLTA Basel 2021, Ethan Cohen Gallery presents a presentation of three radical global artists, Aboudia, Raul De Lara, and Thomas Deininger. These three artists come from different social, regional, and stylistic backgrounds, but what brings them together is their dedication to dismantling systems that no longer serve the world they want to live in. All three of these artists are loud in their criticism of different facets of contemporary society, and have found their voices in the spaces they have created for themselves, expanding into new territories in their artistic practices.

Raul De Lara immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of 12 and has been a DACA recipient (Dreamer) since 2012. Growing up in Texas as a non-English speaker, feeling neither from here nor there, his work now reflects on ideas of nationality, language barriers, body language and the sense of touch. His sculptures explore how stories, folklore, and rituals can be silently communicated through inanimate objects, tools, and foreign environments. De Lara often works with wood, a material that always shows the passing of time on its skin. His aesthetics and materials are inspired by the shared backyard between the United States and Mexico.

Thomas Deininger is a Rhode Island-based artist who is known for his mind-bending assemblage-based sculptures of animals and insects. Critiquing the devastating effects of plastic waste, the global climate crisis, and decreasing insect populations, Deininger uses the instigating material, plastic, to create optical illusion fueled sculptures of the creatures being wiped out by the routines of contemporary consumer society. An artistic environmental activist, Deininger also creates plein air landscapes of the world that surrounds him.

Aboudia is a leading African artist from Cote D’Ivoire who started his career on the streets of Abidjan as a street artist. In energetically painted canvases, inspired by graffiti and tribal art, Aboudia depicts fevered landscapes and street scenes populated by child- like figures. Aboudia vividly portrays of the street culture of urban Africa, featuring street children’s faces intermixed with echoes of tribal masks as part of his symbolic language. He draws on the images that defined his early life growing up in poverty on African streets– street art, traditional tribal art, and the lives of street children– and reimagines and condenses them into vivid, sketch-like, paintings. One recognizes the themes in his iconography: street kids, voodoo creatures, contemporary media, animals and figures inspired by the African mask tradition. Aboudia has recently opened his foundation which supports fellow artists and street kids, giving them access to health, education, encouragement and hope. Aboudia has been recognized globally as one of the most exciting emerging artists in the art market today. He is featured in many distinguished collections, and has been featured in numerous art publications as one of the most exciting African artists today. Most recently, in March 2021, Aboudia had a solo exhibition at Christie’s New York, and is the first artist to ever have a solo online auction at the auction house.

Ethan Cohen Gallery plans to exhibit these three artists together, who dream of a better world by changing the world around them with their art practice. Any form this change may be, it takes courage to use art practice to voice necessity for social progress. These artists have used their voices and talent as a step towards building a better world for the future.