Cozier’s NY exhibition questions the meaning of development

In Development, the first New York solo exhibition by celebrated T&T contemporary artist Christopher Cozier, runs from January 25 to March 16 at David Krut Projects. A press release from the gallery notes that “Cozier investigates the problematic space of post-independence: the symbols of power that remain and change shape, the complex narratives of development, and the loss of history and culture to commercial expansion and profitability.

“In this exhibition, Cozier cuts geometric patterns out of paper, a pattern derived from suburban concrete ‘breeze bricks.’ Post Trinidad’s independence from British rule in 1962, these patterns became pervasive throughout the Caribbean in the 1960s and ‘70s with the rise of the middle class and the boom of new housing developments. In Cozier’s work, this familiar pattern represents the possibility and longing of those in political and social transition across the world. It articulates, at once, a nation’s unresolved promise for a brighter future and the inevitable compromise and sense of displacement that accompanies ‘progress.’”

The catalogue includes an essay by Nicholas Laughlin, who along with Sean Leonard, is one of Cozier’s co-directors in Alice Yard, a contemporary art organisation based in Woodbrook. Laughlin writes: “Cozier describes drawing as his ‘note-taking,’ but these works are not simple records of observation. A certain object seems to act as a trigger for memory, attracting the artist’s ardent attention.

“As these objects become images for contemplation and replication, Cozier’s repeated renderings are investigations of line, tone, proportion, perspective, accident: all the mechanics of image-making. They are also a form of conceptual scrutiny: of the meanings images bear or can be made to bear, but also of what the artist calls ‘conditions of visibility.’ How much of the world around us, he seems to ask, is actually visible to the eye of memory, the eye of invention?”

As part of the exhibition, Cozier has made a limited edition cardboard and aluminium template with an instructional video for users to create their own interpretation of the work. These interpretations can be sent to [email protected] and will be posted on the blog dpatterns2013.wordpress.com