Ethan Cook is a ‘painter without paint’. Brooklyn based artist Ethan Cook is a painter that doesn’t paint… or at least, he doesn’t paint in any traditional way. Instead, his work is deeply concerned in exploring the elemental aspects of painting. At the heart of what he does lies a desire to investigate and deconstruct the physical elements that make up paintings themselves. Cook is an artist who is interested in materials. His visual outcomes are derived from the materials he uses and for Cook, that means that painting is as much about canvas as it is about paint. It is through this belief that he produces his own material; creating his own canvas through a rather labour-intensive process with a loom. While his work may be constructed through a rigid set of rules and restrictions, there’s also a beautiful understated minimalism in his compositions that can’t be ignored. While his work may explore rather interesting questions about the very nature of the image the formal qualities of his work are just as engaging.
~ thefoxisblack.com
