The pop/off/art gallery presents the first exhibition project by George Cohen, whose name opens a new chapter in the career of the artist known for over three decades as Georgy Pusenkoff — a participant in numerous museum exhibitions and biennials, one of the first artists to work with digital image structure, and the creator of the large-scale project "Mona Lisa Travels." The transition to the name Cohen is not a biographical gesture, but rather an internal shift in artistic method. It signifies a shift in artistic foundation — a transition to a new philosophy and a new method of generating images. This is Cohen's first solo exhibition not only in Russia but also internationally, heralding the emergence of a new artist, a new phenomenon in Russia, where, back in the 1970s and 1980s, Georgy Pusenkoff's artistic language was once established.
The exhibition will feature approximately 20 large-format paintings from 2019–2024, previously unexhibited. Cohen's works, executed in a distinctive method, balance on the edge of figurative and abstract imagery, with text integrated into some works. In the "Shadow Theory" project, conceived by the artist over ten years ago, painting is examined as a process of transforming the diffuse light of thought into material form. Shadow is understood not as the absence of light, but as a sign of its embodiment: a space where an idea acquires density, weight, and direction. At the center of the theory is the act of collapse: the moment when a multitude of possible images, existing in a state of imaginary superposition, are compressed into a single brushstroke.

The exhibition reveals shadow as a structural principle, not a metaphor. In the works in the series, shadow is a presence, a contour, and the visible architecture of the soul's movement toward embodiment. It is here, in the tension between light and form, that George Cohen forges his artistic identity:

"People usually perceive shadow as something external, as if shadow were the dark surface of skin or a kind of airy tongue cast by a tree, a pole, a person, a house, or a moving car." This is the most common misconception: shadow is considered a property of light, a shade of illumination, a secondary matter. But shadow is as immaterial as light, and at the same time, even more a part of matter than light itself, because shadow is matter itself. In our visible world, matter is almost always illuminated by direct or reflected light: only through this do we discern form, surface, or contour at all. Shadow, on the other hand, is minus light. But it is precisely this emptiness that is the evidence of the object itself."

George Cohen

“The Theory of Shadow” is a doctrine formulated by George Cohen, based on an understanding of the emergence of a painting as the transformation of the probabilistic nature of an idea into a material, singular and irreversible form.

Its starting point lies in the distinction between what a person feels with the immaterial soul and what he is capable of seeing with the apparatus of human vision. The eye, perceiving light as energy, deciphers a matrix of shadows — a kind of information module that represents the residue of incident, refracted and reflected light. Light is absolute and by its nature invisible; we are able to distinguish and comprehend only shadows, although everyday logic convinces us otherwise.

The contour of a form — resonant both with quantum physics and Kabbalah — is the boundary where matter meets emptiness. Color, in turn, acts as a special state                    of expression, influencing perception as powerfully as the title of a painting. When light disappears, the artwork disappears with it: it exists only within the field of interaction between light, shadow and the material medium.

At the center of the theory lies the act of collapse — the moment when the multitude       of possible images existing in the artist’s imagination in a state of spiritual superposition compress into a single gesture of the brush. A painting arises as the trace of this volitional choice, as the fixation of that which has managed to pass from the infinite into the finite, from an open field of possibilities into a single material resolution.

In this way, shadow ceases to be a metaphor and becomes a structure of artistic being,     a space which reveals the boundary between spiritual light and material form. Through this artistic approach the artist affirms his own presence in the world of art — a presence grounded in discernment, in the awareness of the moment of form’s birth, and in the responsibility for the single image that emerges from the hidden reserve of the possible.

George Cohen

Georgy Pusenkoff was born in 1953 in Krasnopolye (Belarus) to a family of doctors. He received his first drawing lessons from his grandfather, an artist from Vitebsk who studied with Marc Chagall. In 1967, he graduated from the Fechin Art College in Kazan. In 1968, the family moved to Moscow, and in 1971, he entered the Moscow University of Electronic Technology, in the computer technology department, continuing his artistic pursuits. After graduating with honors, Pusenkoff entered the Moscow Printing Academy's graphics department and graduated in 1983. His professors included D. D. Zhilinsky and P. G. Zakharov. From 1983 to 1987, he worked with publishing houses and participated in exhibitions during perestroika, including the 17th and 18th Youth Exhibitions, the ASSA Rock Art Parade, the Hermitage Exhibition, and the Labyrinth Exhibition, among others. Georgy Pusenkoff has participated in a number of large-scale international and Russian projects: "AfterReality" at the Ludwig Museum in Germany and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in Moscow (2013), "Mona Lisa and the Black Square" at the Ritter Museum in Germany (2007), the "Mona Lisa 500" project at the Tretyakov Gallery (2004), and "Mona Lisa Goes Space" at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), among others. In 1987, he began exhibiting abroad, and in 1990, at the invitation of the Hans Mayer Gallery, he began working in Cologne, while continuing his active creative and exhibition activities in Moscow.

In 2011, Pusenkoff began exploring the separation of color and tone and began formulating his "semiotic theory of shadow." It becomes a key moment in the transition to a new artistic phase in his work—the change of name from Georgy Pusenkoff to George Cohen, where the new period does not cancel the previous one, but rather shapes its perspective. The authorial identities are autonomous from one another: his previous manifestation as Georgy Pusenkoff becomes an archive of artistic experience, while George Cohen presents his debut exhibition project, formed around his many years of research practice.