ABOUT KARLA
Karla Cohen’s work is an act of reinvention—layered, unbound, and in constant flux. She moves beyond tradition, channeling the boldness of modern masters like Matisse, Cézanne, Modigliani, Derain, and Munch while embracing contemporary digital techniques that fracture, rebuild, and redefine form. Her process is one of deep engagement—studying, deconstructing, and reimagining the works of those who came before her, not to imitate, but to push further. She absorbs Matisse’s radical color, Cézanne’s structural rigor, and Munch’s psychological intensity, merging them with a contemporary sensibility that balances raw, expressive mark-making with digital manipulation.
Cohen works across mediums, often beginning with studies—charcoal sketches, painted variations, digital explorations—before breaking them down, distorting, and reconstructing. She thrives in the space between control and chaos, structure and spontaneity, precision and rupture. Like Adrian Ghenie’s visceral distortions, Cecily Brown’s lush dynamism, and Peter Doig’s dreamlike fragmentation, her work dissolves the boundaries between past and present, figuration and abstraction, perception and emotion.
At its core, her practice is a search for truth—not as a fixed idea, but as something fluid, layered, and shifting. She is drawn to the moment when a piece no longer belongs to the artist but to the viewer, evoking something beyond language—something deeply felt yet unnamed.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Atlanta, Karla Cohen has spent the last two decades immersed in the textures and contrasts of Boston, Singapore, France, and the UK. These places have shaped her, just as her art shapes her understanding of them in return. Her work is a map of movement—of shifting perspectives, fractured memories, and new visions emerging.
Since 2017, painting has been both a reckoning and a release—a way to translate experience into something tangible. She does not create for beauty alone, but for depth, complexity, and inquiry. Inspired by Picasso’s notion that “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth,” she plays with perception, layering perspectives to challenge both herself and the viewer. Her motivation lies in that quiet, electric moment when a work takes on a life of its own—where meaning is no longer dictated, but discovered—stirring something unnamed yet deeply felt.
