aaray

Designer and avid art collector Eric Cohler muses about the New York art scene.

(excerpt)

Although I appreciate the strong graphic quality of contemporary prints, I am especially drawn to photographs for the way that they freeze a moment in time.  I have developed a wonderful relationship with HASTED HUNT Gallery and hope to curate a show for them early in 2008.  Last year I purchased a photograph by Erwin Olaf that is saturated with brilliant yellows; on first glance it is a disturbing image of young woman, but at the same time captures a fleeting innocence.  This year I purchased a diptych (that I created by pairing two images together) of a young man staring out a window and of a young woman in a similar pose.  Both images suggest a contemplative sense of longing and hopelessness, yet they are simultaneously life affirming.  It's all in the way that one reads these works, much as the way that one reads an Edward Hopper painting.  The anonymity expressed in these photos and the dichotomous sense of open possibility is what draws me to the photographs.