KNEEONECK - DISRUPTED SUBLIMATION

Kneeoneck V,Democratic Islands I, Digital collage on white crochet fabric, Triptych, 140x250 cm, 2023-2025

BETWEEN IMAGE AND ACTION
On Visual Expressions of Disrupted Sublimation in the Work of Amir Cohen

Amir Cohen’s artworks function as a semantic arena for processing complex social phenomena and serve as a visual response to the condition of disrupted sublimation. Cohen works in digital collage, still photography, and video, incorporating contemporary and historical cultural representations to examine the dynamics within society—and between society and the ‘Other’. His works are marked by an empathetic, seductive, and at times satirical aesthetic, reflecting the social and cultural dynamics of the postmodern condition.

KNEEONECK – Social Transformations
Over the past decade, we have experienced dramatic shifts that create an unprecedented emotional and cognitive overload. Global crises, pandemics, social protests, and image-saturated digital platforms have led to a reality in which sublimation processes are disrupted—drives are no longer channeled into stable spaces but instead manifest through an overwhelming proliferation of visual stimuli. As a result, one’s experience of reality becomes fragmented and incoherent, leaving the individual trapped in a constant loop of stimulation.

This process is amplified and illustrated through phenomena such as “echo chambers,” where disinformation spreads within closed social media circles, reinforcing existing views and limiting exposure to opposing perspectives. Similarly, technologies such as Deep Fake, which use artificial intelligence to create convincingly fabricated images and videos, along with the dissemination of misleading information (referred to by some as “alternative facts”), contribute to a crisis of trust and a blurring of the boundaries between reality and fiction. This deepens the sense of existential instability and the gap between how we experience the world and how it is digitally represented.

Cohen’s work gives visual form to this lived experience, using a language marked by layers of semantic fragmentation that disrupt the viewer’s ability to perceive the image as a unified whole. His imagery avoids definitive interpretation and instead offers an open, multi-layered viewing experience meant to highlight the clash between the viewer’s consciousness and the disintegrating reality surrounding them.

Color Schemes and Their Impact
One of the most significant elements in Cohen’s work is his use of color. The dominant hues—vibrant pink, deep ultramarine blue, intense vermilion red, and gold—create a dual visual experience. On one hand, the vivid palette seduces the eye and draws the viewer into the work’s hypnotic visual world. On the other, the intense colors, when tied to emotionally charged imagery, unsettle the viewing experience and generate dissonance between the aesthetic and the allegorical.

In works like The Other Blues I and Sacrifice III, the use of color serves not merely as a visual framework but as an emotional trigger—evoking longing, alienation, and at times even anxiety. The viewer is aesthetically lured inward, only to confront the emotional complexity beneath the colors. The act of viewing becomes a personal confrontation with public responsibility.

Disrupted Sublimation
In Cohen’s work, sublimation does not function as a mechanism for emotional regulation but rather as one that exposes the dysfunction in processes of internalization and social processing. This is particularly evident in the Kneeoneck series, where visual fragmentation, the blending of historical and contemporary symbols, and the disruption of traditional aesthetic hierarchies are key features.

These works challenge the viewer with interpretive conditions, akin to an “open-world” gamification process. While the viewer is free to choose their interpretive path, each route inevitably leads to engagement with critical structures the artist sets in place to examine ethical foundations that drive his work. This tension—between the freedom to interpret and the interpretive challenges presented—leads the viewer to confront their own assumptions about identity and belonging, as well as the influence of power, memory, and history on how they read the image.

Artivism – Art as a Critical Mechanism
Cohen’s art invites critical discourse on socio-political reality. In works such as The Other Blues I and Sacrifice III, he employs hybrid-collage imagery to point to the roles of power, identity, and historical representation in sustaining systems of oppression. The symbolic elements in his work do not generate harmony but instead accentuate tensions and contradictions between different visual worlds. His compositions underscore the absurdity of presenting power and control under an inviting visual guise, using stark visual contrasts to provoke doubt about the truth of the image.

Between Seduction and Disruption
Through his art, Cohen seeks to activate the viewer—to engage them in an awareness of the effects of disrupted sublimation in the public sphere they inhabit. Works like Kneeoneck VIII and Sacrifice III offer a multi-layered viewing experience, where the gaze does not move linearly but splits across layers of visual information. The seductive colors draw the eye to admire the beauty of the details, but within the composition lies a deep sense of unease. The viewer finds themselves caught between beauty and chaos, order and disintegration.

Color, in this context, is not merely a visual device—it becomes a conduit for emotional expression, whether representing desire, longing, or a critique of conventional aesthetics and their function. These works confront the viewer with the conflict between allure and the unsettling implications of the symbolism on display.

Fragmentation and Continuity as Artistic Features
Cohen’s work seeks to highlight the cracks in the social and cultural processing of the concepts of the ‘Other’ and ‘Otherness.’ This is a broader theme in his art, referring to the dynamics of power and societal alienation directed at groups and individuals perceived as foreign or external to dominant norms. The Home-Land-Body-Scape theme underpins his work and serves as a basis for exploring the meanings of ‘habitat,’ nomadism, and identity.

With a complex visual toolkit and a unique aesthetic language, Cohen creates images that confront the viewer with the cultural disruptions of our time. His work offers an alternative reading of reality—fragmented, conflict-laden, yet full of possibilities for reinterpreting the social and personal space. His use of color and visual symbols does not offer comfort; instead, it becomes a critical device, inviting the viewer to question whether they are being drawn in or pushed out, whether they are participants or distant observers. In doing so, his work proposes an infinite field of reading where meaning emerges from a continuous dialogue between the visual and the cognitive.