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Sorel Cohen
 From February 15th 1983 to March 5th 1983
An Extended and Continuous Metaphor

This work evolved through my continuing interest in the staged event for the still camera- the photo-performance, in which I often performed within an autobiographical context, and where the photographs made reference to contemporary painterly aesthetic.

These private performances for the still camera have caused me to reflect on the nature of creative experience becoming an event rather than a process. In performance, a change occurs between the artist’s role and art product. The producer and the product meld to the point where the artist’s posture becomes the actual artwork. In other words, the art object produced and the process of producing it, are not only integral, they can be literally one and the same thing. This is the condition of performance and the subject of my new work, in which I attempt to define and document this integration.

In these photographs, “An Extended and Continuous Metaphor", I am my own subject, my own object, my own objectifier, as well as spectator and audience of my own actions. They represent the condition whereby gesture and object are fused. Painting, the archetypal art-making activity is used allegorically to illustrate this integration, and I maintain a continued interest in the painterly and lyrical potential of the colour photographs of my earlier work.

The physical arrangement of these photographs is an attempt to move away from the grid and linear systems of earlier work to a necessary hierarchical system, and is based on Flemish altarpieces.
- Artist's statement (1982)

Graham, Robert, "Sorel Cohen", Vanguard, May 1983.
"Sorel Cohen", Parachute, juin/juillet/août, 1983.