VON COFFIN

Von Coffin holds an MFA from Yale University and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They work in sculpture, painting, and food service, examining color and figure in new forms, both abstract and explicit. They think of it as “Neuroformalism” or “Caloric Abstraction”- something that equates the inner and invisible with canon. Small painted blocks are bits of information within sculptures, their colors carefully translated from common candies. A cozy paradox forms around this question: what does it mean for something to have a yellow color and taste that “is” lemon or banana, but not be a lemon or banana? Neuroscientist György Buzsáki proposes that “Learning is a matching process between a pre-existing pattern [in the brain] and an outside world event that happens to coincide with the presence of that pattern.” Maybe this color translation is like a neural massage, creating parallel patterns speaking back and forth: therapeutic, meditative, brain love.