Opening reception: Sunday December 18, 2016, 3-6pm.

Curated by Ebony L. Haynes

Sascha Braunig
Alex Chaves
Hamishi Farah
Oreka James
Bradley Kronz
Ajay Kurian
Sara Magenheimer
Adrianne Rubenstein

COOPER COLE is pleased to present a Freud’s Mouth, a group show curated by Ebony L. Haynes.

Sigmund Freud died of oral cancer, heavily affected by his 10-cigar-a-day habit. Well, technically, years of poor medical treatment and dozens of painful oral surgeries lead to his assisted death.

Thought of as a sexist by many, much of his intriguing but unproven theories with little empirical evidence remain a widely revisited and referenced. In his professional career, Freud theorized fives stages of psychosexual development. All stages were pleasure-seeking, driven by psychosexual behavior, and affect personality formation. The first stage being Oral, ages 0-12 months, where the main source of understanding and discovery occurs through the mouth: sucking, eating, tasting, feeling, putting things in your mouth, forming sounds. Freud believed that this stage dictates whether problems with drinking, smoking, nail biting would form, as would psyche of the self.

I’ve long been infatuated with the story of Freud and his mouth and ‘The Mouth’ in general.

Since the age of 4, I’ve suffered Hitchcock-worthy oral trauma – what does that mean about me and my psychosexual being?

I have some theories of my own.

The artists in this show have work that I think is arguably “identity art,” but not your mom’s 1993 identity art. They all make work that, for me, have a sort of break point – an “a ha” moment – and it’s very telling, if you catch it.

– Ebony L. Haynes

For more information please contact the gallery:

info@coopercolegallery.com
+1.416.531.8000