Turley Gallery Features Kevin Cobb '23 in Solo Exhibition, 'Optic Nerve'

Multidisciplinary Visual Arts alum Kevin Cobb '23 has a new solo exhibition, Optic Nerve, at Turley Gallery in Hudson, New York. The installation includes oil paintings, works on paper and digital art, united by a distorted, circular motif. Optic Nerve will be open through December 21, 2025.

Cobb's distortions play in the space between seeing and being seen. Some of the works embody Cobb's own point of view, while others peer into his studio, easels and green drafting mats, cluttered desks and a Black man at work. Some works, like Strike on the Rock (16 x 16 x 1 inches, ink on paper, 2024), transcend a visual scene to distort the symbols of words and their meaning.

"There are also numerous spiritual, mystical threads innate to Cobb’s work," said gallerist Peter Kelly. "Latin titles, bible verses, and Egyptian iconography place the physical distortions within a metaphysical framework. As with shifting the perspective corporeally inside one’s head, this conceptual framework for the work shifts the perspective along a more abstract plane, somewhere far beyond the optic nerve."

Cobb uses the circle as a vehicle to consider and distort perspective. Some paintings, like RainbowPumpkin (44 x 50 x 2 inches, oil on canvas, 2017), share with audiences parts of seeing that we overlook—our eyelashes, the curves of our cheeks. All the works, though, probe at the mystery of objectivity, down to the exhibit's name, which refers to the biological process of producing an image in our field of vision.

"My fascination with spherical perspective, circular motifs, and the first-person point of view grew from my engagement with religion, spirituality, and mindfulness," Cobb said. "Like the circle and sphere, these practices serve as symbols of holism and rootedness in the present, with the viewer or subject imagined as the emblematic dot within the circle."

In Optic Nerve, Cobb uses all the tools at his disposal—from his own eyes to acrylic paints to 3D printers—to experiment toward more inclusive and truthful ways of seeing. 

Kevin Cobb is an artist born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended Carver Center for Arts and Technology and the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he earned his BFA. Cobb moved to New York, where he received his MFA from Columbia University and now lives with his wife. His work has been exhibited internationally and has won several awards.