Aimée Cotnoir
“The reduction of reading to a consumption is clearly responsible for the ‘boredom’ experienced by many in the face of the modern (‘unreadable’) text, the avant-garde film or painting: to be bored means that one cannot produce the text, play it, open it out, set it going."
Roland Barthes, Work to Text, pg 174
Statements regarding recent work -
If painting engages with contemporaneity and is combined intertextually with other mechanical picture making mediums, it has potential for new relevancy within today’s artistic discourse. It becomes a means to counteract the onslaught of transparent and rapidly consumed visual media that is numbing us from our own physicality while reducing our ability to participate in the meaningful development of our own visual language. Combining painting textually with film, new significations are made and the boundaries of its artistic expression to a contemporary audience are significantly widened.
Through my creative process, I use my paint to manipulate and re-interpret filmic imagery- to ruminate upon topics such as relationships, intimacy and isolation. Often, I find pleasure and beauty within painting, at times turmoil. It is my timeless physical process of re-creation. My large-scale narrative paintings are studies of imagery in which I seek to find new meaning in the gaps and overlays of found narrative. The layered work is a physical hunt for beauty and purpose in a world of distance and isolation.
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EDUCATION
Lesley University, Cambridge, MA
M.F.A in Visual Art, August 2016
Worcester State University, Worcester, MA
B.A in English, minor in art ; summa cum laude , June 2013
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ART EXPERIENCE
2023 Assets For Artists: Artists U Cohort in Fitchburg, MA, organized by MASS MoCA
2019 Co-curator of Shift Happens for Melanie Carr Gallery in Essex, CT
2018 Recipient of ArtsWorcester “Material Needs Grant”
2017-2019 Co-host/ co-producer of Art Interview series, ArtSpeakr
2017 Art Critic for The Arts Fuse – biweekly review of New England exhibitions
2016-2017 Core Organizer of “Group 6: Lesley Visual Arts MFA Alumni”
2017 Team Curator of ‘Pop Up Group Show – Group 6:WIP
2016 Resident Critic for Lesley University, June 2016
2016 Team Assistant Curator for Missing ; a student juried show curated under the
direction of Al Miner, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the MFA
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EXHIBITIONS
2023 Strut, ArtsWorcester Main Galleries, Worcester, MA
2023 Mary Schein Fall Salon, Kathyrn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2022 Small Works Show, 650 E. Kendall Street Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2022 Mary Schein Fall Salon, Kathyrn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2019 Shift Happens, Melanie Carr Gallery, Essex, CT
2019 Material Needs Grant Exhibition, West Gallery, Worcester, MA
2018 Dialogues: Medium and Materiality, New Art Center, Newton, MA
2018 Call & Response: E Pluribus Unum, Fitchburg Art Museum, MA
2018 83rd Regional Exhibition of Art and Craft, Fitchburg Art Museum, MA
2018 After A Fashion, Aurora Gallery, Worcester MA
2017 E Pluribus Unum Group Show, Aurora Gallery, Worcester, MA
2017 The Fusical, Warehouse XI, Somerville, MA
2017 The One, Group Show, Aurora Gallery, Worcester, MA
2017 Group 6:WIP, Group Show, Cambridge, MA
2017 ArtsWorcester Biennial, Aurora Gallery, Worcester, MA
2016 Thesis Graduate Show, Robert and Raizes Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2016 CAA Lesley MFA Student Show, Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2015 Boston Young Contemporaries, Boston, MA
2012 Winter Doldrums, Group Show of four artists, Fitchburg, MA
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AFFILIATIONS
ArtsWorcester, Worcester, MA
The Arts Fuse, Boston, MA
Group 6 Artist Collective, Cambridge, MA
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COLLECTIONS
Kathleen Wright and Jonathan Ostrowsky Private Collection
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AWARDS
2017 Second Place Juror’s Prize, ArtsWorcester Biennial
2016 Alumni Award, Lesley University, Cambridge - Faculty voted sole recipient- for
artistic growth and achievement.
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PUBLICATIONS
2017 Author of Visual Arts Review, “Expanding Abstraction-What’s So Narrow About
That?”. The Arts Fuse, Boston
2017 Author of Visual Arts Review, "Dana Schutz-A Genius or a Hot Mess?". The
Arts Fuse, Boston