Opening reception: Saturday May 19, 4-7pm

COOPER COLE is pleased to present a 2-person exhibition featuring Paul P. and B. Wurtz.

“What is effective is the affray of words, the vibrating force of their unforeseenness, their clash upon or contrast with one another. Why do we react more to ‘the thin gate clanged’ than to ‘the iron gate shut noisily’?

Language can not only register but heighten, by its speed, its emphasis and its rhythm, the emotional pressure we put behind it. Not only the literary but the psychic difference between the long and the short sentence is very marked: and we should make the most of the variation. There should be variation, too, in what we may call the texture of our prose – that is, some passages are the better for being written lightly; others demand a packed, possibly somewhat ‘difficult’ concentration of ideas and images. The former passages, probably, will be either narrative or dialogue; the latter, analysis or description. Always try to simplify is the rule – but there remain complexities which must be battled through. The imperative, in fact the essential thing, is that variations in writing, from page to page, should correspond with what is going on concurrently in the writer’s mood and in the actual story. Proust saw writing as a form of translation; we do, by the process of finding and fitting words, attempt to capture a thousand otherwise fleeting sensations, feelings, impressions, lights and shadows and half-thoughts. Language must be a strong though fine net.”

– Elizabeth Bowen, on the subject of writing, excerpted from ‘Advice’, 1960.

Paul P. (b. 1977, Canada) has exhibited internationally and was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, as well as in group exhibitions including MoMA, New York, and the Freud Museum, London. Paul P. has had solo exhibitions at Maureen Paley, London, United Kingdom; Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy; Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver; The Power Plant, Scrap Metal, Toronto, Canada; Daniel Reich Gallery, Broadway 1602, New York; The Suburban, Oak Park; Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles; The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, USA; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria / Paris, France. He has been collected by MoMA, LACMA, The Brooklyn Museum, SFMoMA, and The Whitney, among others. Paul P. lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

B. Wurtz (b. 1948, USA) received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. In 2015, Wurtz was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom. In 2016 the exhibition traveled to La Casa Encendida, Madrid. He has had additional solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Freiburg; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. Wurtz currently lives and works in New York, USA.