Ethan Cohen Gallery is pleased to present The Doors of Perception: New Approaches to Realism, a group exhibition featuring the works of 29 contemporary artists who excel at translating their perception of the world to the viewer through their art practice. Each artist has a unique approach, technique and chosen subject matter, and this exhibition seeks to showcase the rich and varied approaches taken in contemporary realism. 

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The show's focus and mission is not merely to display what the artist sees but their ways of seeing. Each strives to infuse an eloquence into the sensory filtration of phenomena, to turn a passive process of absorbing reality into a demonstration of the artist's active revivification powers. Between the perceived and the presented stands the artist. The show asks the viewer to immerse in the elemental prism of the individual artist's role as vehicle and vessel. From the collective perspective, the show offers a wholistic experience, a vision of the globe's multifarious cultural expressions jostling to be witnessed in chorus. The panoply of both diversity and also interaction between cultures. Art as a shared global practice, distilled through cultures and individuated by artists. 

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Palpable too is the historical dialogue between and within cultures. In the Chinese tradition, we see the evolution from a kind of landscape metaphysics rooted in one society (Gan Yu) to hyper-realist nudes (Shi Chong) to a contemporary conceptual-realism cross-pollinated by global genres where the landscape has become the self-daubed artist's body (Qiu Zhijie). In the work of Mina Cheon we see a South Korean-American artist portraying her alter-ego as a North Korean female cadre, crossing the internal divide within her country of origin. Yigal Ozeri's portraits depict renowned global figures, often from the American political scene, an Israeli-born artist capturing the borderless nature of iconic leaders of pop-cultural significance. nature and architecture. Austin Stiegemeier explores comparable ground with harshly-revealed ultra-realist human figures in naturescapes, so eloquent of our alienation from our living environment. The show offers a kaleidoscope of media illustrating realism's multiplexity, featuring photography, landscape in brush-and-ink, self-portraiture, pseudo-propaganda and political representation.

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Featuring Works By:

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Ai Weiwei

Austin Stiegemeier

Paul Paiement

Anna Navasardian

Gan Yu

Yigal Ozeri

Joseph Ayers

Li Daiyun

Tony Shore

Mina Cheon aka Kim Il Soon

Qi Zhilong

Chi Ming

Chie Fueki

Qiu Zhijie

Shi Chong

Tang Hui

Jeannie Weissglass

Johan Wahlstrom

Zhang Xiaomao

Emil Alzamora

Peng Yu and Sun Yuan

Thomas Deininger

Jim Peters

James Donaldson

Liu Xiaodong

Wang Yuping

Sherry Kerlin

Milan Prokes