I have to admit that part of my original take on Michael Cook’s recent exhibition Venetian was wrong in this sense: I thought the title of Cook’s show referred to Venice, Italy, and that city’s Venetian waters with their refractory, illusive surfaces. The water is never just water there, but a plateau of mirrors. I initially saw Cook’s new body of work as yet another prism with which to view the slippery nature of images, the endlessly changing, liquid relationship between th

“Venetian,” is comprised of twenty-four oil on canvas paintings and gouache works on paper whose figurative compositions are subsumed under obfuscating scrims of vertical lines that evoke and upturn the blinds’ fragmentation of perspective. The commonplace window coverings that we designate today as Venetian blinds trace their origins to what is now modern-day Iran. Discovered by Venetian merchants in the 18th century, and taking immediate hold in France, where they are commo

Click here to view catalog Venetian The paintings of Michael Cook by Robert Ware We used to believe that a truly harmonious relationship would result when man took his identity from his setting…Now we are inclined to manipulate the environment, use it as a tool for creating our identity. [J.B. Jackson, 1970] My task which I am trying to achieve is…to make you hear, to make you feel – it is, before all, to make you see. That – and no more, and it is everything. [Jos

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Michael Cook Venetian August 3 - 28, 2011 Opening reception: Friday, August 5, 2011, 5:00-7:00 PM David Richard Contemporary 130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 87501 p 505-983-9555 | f 505-983-1284 | www.DavidRichardContemporary.com David Richard Contemporary is pleased to present Venetian, an exhibition of recent paintings by Michael Cook. Three distinct groups of work will be presented: landscapes, clouds and abstractions referred to as “id.” T

William Brice, Untitled (10-23), 1978, Charcoal on paper, 24" x 18" ABSTRACTED BODIES William Brice, Peter Chinni, Michael Cook, Edward Dugmore, Beverly Fishman, Jean-Marie Haessle, Gregory Frank Harris, Marcia Lyons, Paul Henry Ramirez, Louis Ribak and David Solomon February 1 - 26, 2011 Opening reception: Friday, February 4, 2011, 5:00-7:00 PM David Richard Contemporary 130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 87501 p 505-983-9555 | f 505-983-1284 | www.DavidRichardContem