Hot Edges
Rachel Gisela Cohen and Carlos Rosales-Silva

Hot Edges is a site-specific installation and collaboration between New York City-based artists Rachel Gisela Cohen and Carlos Rosales-Silva. Both artists’ work is based in a language of painting and abstraction, which relies heavily on elements of texture and visual play. For this collaboration, Carlos Rosales-Silva will begin the installation by creating a large mural wall painting, as Cohen will cut, stretch, and staple various layers of collected and recycled textiles throughout the space.

About the Artists

Carlos Rosales-Silva’s work exists in the space between borders. The works are grounded in a practice of painting but often borrow from sculptural and installation practices and exist in the spaces between classification. The paintings, sculptures, murals, and installations, are abstract acts of personal discovery that reveal meaning long after they are completed. In this sense, they are non-textual communications, a meditative and slow way of processing knowledge. 

Carlos Rosales-Silva (He/Him) was born in the borderlands of Texas, New Mexico, Mexico, and the lands of the Piro/Mansa/Tiwa peoples. He currently lives and works in New York, NY (Lenapehoking).  His studio practice imagines a modernism that is free of Euro-colonial interference.  Carlos is currently an artist in residence at Abrons Art Center. Previous residencies include Residency Unlimited NYC (2020), Artpace in San Antonio, Texas (2018), and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY (2017). His most recent exhibitions were at Latchkey Gallery in New York City (2020), A solo project at Penn State University (2020), and a curatorial project at Spring Break Art Show (2020).  

For more information on Carlos and his work visit his website here, or follow in on Instagram.

Rachel Gisela Cohen’s mix-media paintings consist of paint, mica, raw pigment, silkscreen medium, canvas, linen, and various types of collected and recycled fabric. Her materials are cut, stretched, and layered, creating a highly saturated and visually excessive surface. Thinking about contemporary beauty standards and the role of color as a signifier, she is fascinated by society’s pressure on women to adorn and “beautify” themselves as it is opposite to the role of most female animal species found in nature. Using high contrast palettes, touch-sensitive fabrics, and iridescent sequined clothing, she investigates the aposematic properties of color, pattern, and gesture. The color and patterning of her works stem from both an observation and reflection on organisms and materials found deep inside Costa Rican’s ecosystems and New York City’s garment district. Thinking about the decorative as a defense mechanism, her work reflects on the politics of beauty, surface, and the excess of contemporary culture, moving between the natural and material world.

Rachel Gisela Cohen (She/Her) is an artist, educator, and independent curator living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute and a B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts from Drew University. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, COPE NYC, and the Montclair Art Museum. She has exhibited works both nationally and internationally, exhibiting most recently at Spring Break Art Fair (2020), Armenia Art Fair, The Boiler | Pierogi Gallery, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and Hunter College Art Galleries. She currently teaches at the Museum of Arts and Design and is the Director of Chashama’s Programs department.

For more information on Rachel and her work visit their website here, or follow in on Instagram.