ELIZABETH BROWN finds the landscapes of Ezra Cohen have a life of their own

Artists have often spoken of the hunch that they do not create works from scratch, but instead merely reveal them, liberating works from the exterior shell of their component materials.

On encountering the mixed-media paintings of Ezra Cohen this feeling compounds: the viewer begins to suspect that the artwork independently forms itself; there is a sense that on looking away for a moment, something in the picture might move.

Cohen’s crepuscular landscapes are wrought from both organic and artificial means – be that oil paints, basic art-shop materials or, the mood taking him, his own blood: anything goes.

On display at the Meller Merceux gallery on Oxford’s High Street, this intimate but powerful exhibition is well worth a visit, although on leaving you might experience the creeping sensation that the works continue to exist in their own semi-organic universe without you.

At first the images seem innocuous enough, presented in black, glossy frames in the sanitised commercial gallery environment. In their impasto and luminosity these paintings are akin to mosaics.

Cohen’s playfulness with materials makes for a quirky viewing experience; in Tenacious Gold, a forest scene, a visual pun is presented – are the scattered golden leaves before us rendered from gold-leaf? And in Autumnal Reward, an earthen landscape with no foliage, the parched, cracked soil is hauntingly evocative – despite the obvious use of craft materials in its representation.

The disquieting conceit of these works is in the topsy-turvy demarcation of the roots of the forest trees, which appear to quicken and unfold before you. The longer you look, the more potent they become: parasites of your gaze.

It would probably be possible to turn many of the paintings upside down and still retain a coherent forest image, the trees’ roots recalling branches – and also veins. Another material metaphor is in place here: I am sure that this is where the artist has mixed his paints with blood.

It is disingenuous to keep referring to the artist(s) by a pseudonym: the mysterious Mr Cohen is actually two Oxfordshire artists, both male and in their early forties, one with a Fine Art training and one without – which I suspect gives rise to the mixture of precious and profane materials, as well as what is at times an immature draughtsmanship (although this is partly what makes the pictures work).

The idea of a collaboration does invite you to wonder exactly how the artists negotiated whose blood was required for the creation of each painting. ‘Cohen’ cites influences such as Edvard Munch, personal memories of mystical encounters with the wilderness in Eastern European forests, and man’s destruction of nature.

When considering an artist who exists as an elusive pseudonym, it is difficult to know how much of his own legend is a bona-fide creative force. Nevertheless, the works do have a sense of cultish ritual working alongside a more immediate evocation of nature, which regardless of its origins, is compelling.

Man might be the destructor of the natural world, but I think in Cohen’s work it is the other way around: in entertaining your gaze, the roots of the trees seem to become stronger, sucking the life-force from you.

Which is why although I very much recommend this intriguing show to anyone who happens to be walking down the High Street, I don’t think I will be returning for a second look.

Ezra Cohen,
Meller Merceux Gallery, High Street, Oxford. Until February 28
Monday-Saturday 10am-6pm
See mellermerceux.com
Call 01865 727996.