Refactoring (1966-74): Harold Cohen

Gazelli Art House is thrilled to present Refactoring (1966-74), a solo exhibition exploring transitional work from 1966-1974 by represented artist Harold Cohen, coinciding with a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art (3 Feb - May 2024). 

Following Gazelli Art House’s seminal exhibition The AARON Retrospective (2022), Refactoring (1966-74)investigates Cohen’s practice in the years preceding, and inaugural to, his creation of AARON – the pre-eminent computer programme designed to create art autonomously. 

By 1966, to which the earliest works in this exhibition date, Cohen was an internationally respected visual artist, immersed in devising new rules for painting. Having held a solo retrospective at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London the previous year, Cohen would represent the UK at the 33rd Venice Biennale in Five Young British Artists in 1966. The work of this period embodies what Cohen deemed “paradoxes” – tensions of form and surface brought about by fluctuating texture and fragmentary line – described by Artist and Critic Andrew Forge as “painting about the meaning of painting”. In 1967, Cohen’s works for Young British Painters at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels were said to possess an “overallness” and “unitary impact” by Critic and Writer Gene Baro, an observation reflective of Cohen’s ambitions for “everything to be determined from the first mark. All arrives”.