JOSEPH COCHRAN II

A Lot Of Things Have Changed, A Lot of Thing Have Not

October 14 - November 7th, 2021

Swivel Gallery is proud to present “A Lot Of Things Have Changed, A Lot Of Things Have Not", Joseph Cochran II's inaugural exhibition at the gallery. Surveying six years of work by the artist, the exhibition seeks to chronicle and highlight Cochran's practice, rooted in the study of societies and their frameworks, life’s temporality, and enduring inquiries of migration and its struggles. Cochran’s investigations into these often rural, less frequented locations across continents; communities which are often in their own way are hermetic, tie to Cochran’s own origins in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Combining a range of diaristic, journalistic and abstract photographic techniques, his voyeuristic and fixated works exist in a space unbound by time and identity, which in itself is an aggressive stance as we face a barrage of world events and technology at a rapid pace.

While Cochran’s approach is entrenched in the craft of photography, drawing on the medium's specific tools, its real magic may stem from his ability to measure time, and space, in millimeters and milliseconds. This hypersensitivity, the unteachable ability to recognize a momentary shift, which on one hand could be labeled paranoia, and on the other a deep momentary meditative state is the paradigm of Cochran’s practice. One can ascertain, its development derives from the constant struggle of survival in Black America, an urgency where every minute is creation, every minute the world is falling to pieces, and death is always present. Through this lens, figuratively and literally the artist is able to recognize both suffering, and magic; intuitively transcending the subject and becoming an experience between you and that decisive moment. The exhibition looks to serve as a loose journey through the artist's extended quartering in Asia, Europe, and Africa, following in the footsteps of the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, and Dawou Bey. His lengthy stays in these sequestered territories engage and respond to both a personal history and Black history, continuing the art of photography’s civic duty to break down barriers, create dialogues, and engage communities. Cochran’s Poststructuralist approach stresses the importance of the signified, the idea – the connotation, which in turn is influenced by the cultural perspective of the viewer, where one creates their own fragmented narrative based on their own respective personal experience. It is an art which is made with time, and time expects it. The exhibition, staged as a blurred narrative that takes the viewer on the six year rove, split between two pulls; for Cochran, two separate worlds he drifts in and out of, a confluence where the actual and the Imaginary meet.

The left wall illustrates the beginning of the allegory, with “Untitled (Summer)” portraying a dizzying departure from New York, into a dazzling plane window tableau, “Above (Shanghai)”. As the story unfolds, what’s more revelatory and invariably overlooked, are the multiple layers of the Black man in America. The clandestine tenuity of “Oostende” and “Poetto”, the intimate evocation of “Untitled (Campagna)” and “Cagliari”, the empyrean twinkle in “Mamoiada”; it is Cochran’s ubiquitousness, and vulnerability that leaves us in a state of deja vu. Akin to the history of postwar photography, its efficacy is often earmarked by the hour. Here, illustrated by the right wall of the exhibition, is the artist’s return to an America in reckoning. The air seems to permeate with an eerie, foreboding presence depicting our present state, and uncertain future. In “Sutter Ave”, an ominous bodega encapsulated by darkness, can be read as Cochran’s shift back home; an isolating, love and hate relationship of what can be, and what is.

The left wall illustrates the beginning of the allegory, with “Untitled (Summer)” portraying a dizzying departure from New York, into a dazzling plane window tableau, “Above (Shanghai)”. As the story unfolds, what’s more revelatory and invariably overlooked, are the multiple layers of the Black man in America. The clandestine tenuity of “Oostende” and “Poetto”, the intimate evocation of “Untitled (Campagna)” and “Cagliari”, the empyrean twinkle in “Mamoiada”; it is Cochran’s ubiquitousness, and vulnerability that leaves us in a state of deja vu. Akin to the history of postwar photography, its efficacy is often earmarked by the hour. Here, illustrated by the right wall of the exhibition, is the artist’s return to an America in reckoning. The air seems to permeate with an eerie, foreboding presence depicting our present state, and uncertain future. In “Sutter Ave”, an ominous bodega encapsulated by darkness, can be read as Cochran’s shift back home; an isolating, love and hate relationship of what can be, and what is.