Tears for Years
Carrie Cook
On view November 14 through January 23, 2021 by appointment
Tears for Years reviewed in issue #23 of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles by Lauren Moya Ford.
Tyler Park Presents is pleased to announce Tears for Years, the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles for Carrie Cook. Tears for Years includes new paintings and an installation which explore the psychological territory of memory and grief through a symbolic visual language. The works feature crashing waterfalls, murky ponds, tears falling down cheeks, the distant ocean and pouring rain, revealing water in various forms as a motif for emotional life.
In her practice, Cook mines personal photographs through a process in which she prints, sorts, and cuts these in order to slice through lived experiences and pull forth what lies beneath the surface. The boundaries between the routine of the everyday and the disorienting presence of memory are blurred, layering moments in time and disparate places. This practice is a way of reentering past experiences in order to mend or address a history and results in paintings that walk a line between abstraction and representation, forming a surrealist narrative.
For Tears for Years the works show meditations on water, as well as weather, the physical body, light at night, animals and food. These coalesce to reveal the pointed magic and moments of transcendence that make up the highest highs and lowest lows of our lives. The works show a figure driving in a car, connecting to the passing landscapes; waterfalls emerging from darkness, connecting with another source; the ocean current churning up the discarded. In addition, Sunny Beach Fountain, an installation using sand, a styrofoam cooler, a water pump, photo collage, and a collection of ceramic sculptures (made collaboratively with friends of the artist), serves as an endpoint in a series of rituals that consider love and death and the potential for transformation found in liminal spaces or states of being.
Carrie Cook was born in Nashville, TN and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She holds a MFA from the University of Houston and a BFA from the University of Texas, Austin. Her work has been exhibited both domestically and internationally at venues such as Superstimulus, New Zealand, Insect Gallery, Los Angeles, Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles, Lyeberry HQ, Brooklyn, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, and Blaffer Museum of Art, Houston.
*additional information about Sunny Beach Fountain or the original ritual held in Galveston, TX is available at the gallery and by request.