ETHAN COOK
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog
May 21 – June 15, 2022
Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog, an exhibition of new works of handmade paper by Ethan Cook. Cook’s paper works are a series of unique color and shape studies, most of which are comprised of six rectangles arranged in two rows of three. Similar to the artist’s painting practice, this suite of works on paper explores the relationship between material, medium, and minimalism.
The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog is titled after a sentence which employs every letter of the alphabet; like this clause, the works on view distill a complex system of signification down to its most elemental parts. Color, proportion, depth, form, and scale are pared down to the basic organizing trope of iterative rectangles. By employing a grid’s structure – albeit an imperfect one that bears the mark of the artist’s hand – Cook is able to give color the space to articulate itself. Each work cultivates a distinct mood: the feeling evoked by Blue, off-whites, yellow, alabaster, for instance, inspires a sense of calm that diverges from the bold energy of Orange, Purple, two Yellow, two Red. These interactions between colors are a simplified version of not only what our eyes perceive all day, every day, but also how we process and respond to it.
In order to produce these handmade paper works, Cook mixes raw pigment with abaca, cotton, and water. The mixture is subsequently pressed and dried. Because his sourced materials are natural, rather than synthetic constructions, a sense of place is ever present. As the artist notes, his process is “like a little big bang—something coming from what were previously disparate materials. It’s at the very act of creation. There is something very romantic about the process, birthing a body in a way.”
Ethan Cook (b. 1983, Texas; lives and works in New York, NY) has had solo shows at Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles and Marfa; Half Gallery, New York; Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; Galerie Philipp Zollinger, Zurich; T293, Rome; Loyal Gallery, Stockholm; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; Noire Chapel, Torino; Bill Brady, Miami; Sunday-S Gallery, Copenhagen; American Contemporary, New York; Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Paris; Rod Barton, London; Patrick de Brock Gallery, Knokke; and Gana Art Hannam, Seoul. His work has been covered in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Brooklyn Rail, Interview Magazine, Architectural Digest, among other publications.