LYNNE COHEN
01.11.2025 - 24.01.2026
Play at Your Own
Jacky Strenz
"Play at Your Own" is the title of the exhibition by the American-Canadian artist Lynne Cohen (1944-2014). The b/w photographs, which were taken between 1977 and 1991, show deserted rooms. Nothing is staged. The artist photographed the spaces as she found them: a collection of cardboard dummies for shooting practice in a military facility, neatly arranged by size; the interior of a Hercules bomber, reconstructed in a military training center; a shooting range with dummy animals; sacks piled into mountains in a paintball facility.
At first glance, these photographs seem strange, spooky, almost threatening. However, they are not based solely on the artist's sociological or psychological interest, but are equally characterized by a subtle and wry humour. "Play at Your Own", the lettering stuck to the wall behind the bags of the paintball facility, is thus symptomatic of the exhibited photographs of authoritarian institutions and the humorous response to "Play at your own risk".
Lynne Cohen is one of the most important representatives of conceptual documentary photography, which draws on the tradition of Walker Evans as well as the environments of the 1960s and 1970s. After studying sculpture and graphic art, Cohen began to focus on the psychological and sociological characteristics of the North American middle class in the 1970s. Using an 8 × 10-inch camera, she initially photographed living spaces, small stores, semi-public spaces such as men's clubs, banquet halls, hotel lobbies, classrooms and offices. From the 1980s onwards, she became increasingly interested in the mechanisms of control and manipulation in society. She concentrated on more authoritarian institutions such as laboratories, police and military training centers and shooting ranges.
Cohen's images show a technical and managed world that requires highly specialized activities, but at the same time fosters a sense of alienation and isolation. Although most of these activities take place in the midst of society and are clearly functionalized, they are often unknown to us and happen in secret.
However, regardless of the spaces the artist photographed, her concern was always the same: she saw the world as ready-made installations, often referencing conceptual art, pop art or minimalism.
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Lynne Cohen, born 1944 in Racine, Wisconsin, USA, lived and worked in Canada from 1973 until her death in 2014. She received numerous awards, including the Governor General's Award in Visual Arts and Media Arts (Canada) in 2005, and exhibited internationally in countless solo and group exhibitions.
Her works can be found in numerous collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Albertina, Vienna; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Städel Museum, Frankfurt/Main; Tate Modern, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Art Institute Chicago and Metropolitan Museum, NY.
The Centre Pompidou, Paris dedicated a comprehensive solo exhibition to Lynne Cohen in 2023, for which a catalog was published.Lynne Cohen, "Laboratoires/Observatoires" (c: Florian Ebner and Matthias Pfaller), Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2023.
Jacky Strenz
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