Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Propositions, the second solo exhibition of New York-based artist Ethan Cook with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view from June 30 until August 11th. An opening reception will be held at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd on Saturday, June 30th from 6-8pm.

Working with a four-harness floor loom, Cook creates woven compositions of cotton squares and rectangles. These colorfields of varying hues follow the reasoning behind propositional logic, conditional reasoning which interprets the combination or alteration of one statement, in order to further understand their innate connections to construct more complex relationships.

The simplest statements are understood as the given, “known” parts. Similarly, Cook approaches the essential atomic elements of painting – canvas, frame, color and texture – as the individual properties of the equation. The resulting compositions become the proof, each canvas sequently growing outward, following its own inherent analytical structure, yet still heavily indexed by the artist’s hand.

Each cross of cotton is understood as a deictic fact. In conversation with the mimetic qualities of appropriation, Cook imparts deliberate, subtle gestures in what otherwise appears as an aesthetic and emotional sublimation of form. Regarding the loom as analogous to the canvas printer, the work is dictated as much by the parameters of the apparatus, as calculated against its limitations. The composition of each piece is arranged according to the remaining or leftover canvas from the previous work, which in turn determines the stretchers. Each canvas drifts into the next, an exercise of restraint akin to mathematical painting. In this way, Cook’s paintings develop organically, producing entirely affected landscapes, realized cumulatively through the whole, complete installation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph survey of Cook’s works from 2012-2018 with an essay by Alex Bacon.

Ethan Cook (b. 1983) lives and works in New York, NY. His work has shown extensively in the United States and beyond, including institutions such as the Fondazione 107, Turin, National Museum of Capodimonte, Naples and the Chelsea Art Museum, New York. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Patrick De Brock Gallery (Belgium), Gana Art (Seoul) and Bill Brady (Miami).