Journeys

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Journeys | A Saturation Point project | 5 October 2025

Bernard Cohen, Nathan Cohen, Reiko Kubota

A review by Laurence Noga

A polyphonic exploration underpins ‘Journeys’, a Saturation Point project with Bernard Cohen, Nathan Cohen and Reiko Kuboto. The show highlights their simultaneous understanding of colour and structure, and examines their extraordinary network of connections. Their approaches are linked through family relationships and dynamics, and are further heightened through a sense of place, a systematic understanding that develops through iteration, and the integration of compositional decisions, each reacting strongly to the systems and conversations which guide their natural synergy.

Reiko Kubota, Vestige (2025) 24” x 24” (61 x 61 cm) x 2 panels

Inspired deeply by those shared mechanisms, Reiko Kubota builds a natural counterpoint to our experience of the exhibition. Vestige uses softly controlled components and compositional devices, like a passage of sound. The structural details within the two panels act like many sounds or voices, perhaps echoing contrapuntal music. We don’t at first notice the vertical space between the two components of the work. I find myself wanting to straighten the angular (hard-edged) white vertical bands, reacting physically to how we interpret the works’ symmetry (or asymmetry). At first, the painting focuses our attention on the similarities within its collaged structure. Completely absorbed in the painting’s independent rhythm and contour, we notice the shifting direction and complexity of each section through the use of transparency and shape, particularly through the insistence of the colour scheme that glows underneath the shadowy transparent shades. The constant movement of the subtle stripes of light red, red oxide or light green are sprayed or scumbled, shifting optically below the darkening of the vertical spaces in a symphonic relationship to the other paintings in the show.

Significantly, these three artists’ approach to negative space is specific and considered. Perhaps examining his observations from visiting New Mexico, or listening to his father’s war experiences, Nathan Cohen concentrates the eye across his fluid constructions, allowing the viewer to dip in and out of his structural decisions. In Cluster (2018) the complex repetition of cross-forms visually accelerates, with increasing speed and frequency, interlocking movement and form. Cohen subtly merges and overlaps the intersection of each cross, sometimes by removing a section or by bridging the connections, painting in a hard-edged shape in deep black or clean white. Constructing an entire entity holistically, he uses the outer edge of the assemblage to build a system of shadows and memory that feels immersed in flight.

Each of the works retains its creative identity and structural approach, but also sharpens the alliance between the artists. Bernard Cohen’s painting In Black and White Time recalls the speed of thought in Nathan Cohen’s constructed works, but the density of the space is built with such a conglomeration of forms, like an early Braque painting (the Portuguese 1911), that everything feels layered, fractured and distorted. The composition revolves around the black and white target that reverberates like a radar from the centre of the painting. Complimentary colour schemes reflect air-to-air battles, highlighting the multiple aircraft caught up in conflict and confusion. Cohen not only sparks our imagination through the detail, but through the build-up of the paint, taped off many times, creating physical relief and suggestions of flying artillery across the skies.

Nathan Cohen, Cluster (2018), 61 x 61 x 4 cm

Bernard Cohen’s drawings are a dramatic addition to the show. As I sift carefully through the yellowing pages of his many sketchbooks, I notice the speed of thinking and the complexity of the compositions. Cohen’s additions to the drawings often happen years later, returning to past ideas. Yet everything instantly feels more intimate as he develops a range of fantastical compositional devices. Overlapping aircraft fuse or morph into each other. This approach to the navigation of formations in the composition is echoed by our understanding of aircraft operations’ battle formations (perhaps at night), often suggesting British aircraft like Spitfires or Hawker Hurricanes. Cohen accents this through loosely defined felt-tip shading, or by incorporating biro drawings, building an extraordinary and complicated contrast between aerial and linear perspectives, through gradual tonal changes and directional movements.

Pages from Bernard Cohen’s sketchbooks

‘Thinking through process’ feels important in deciphering the overlaps between the artists. For example, Nathan Cohen’s relief structure in Maya II responds to Bernard Cohen’s construction through abstracted forms, bringing to mind a bird’s-eye view of the buildings or cities that were potential targets in WWII. Yet the title refers to the ground-breaking mathematical concepts which the Mayan civilisation developed around 1500 - 200 BC, directing our attention towards the strength of Mayan culture, perhaps exploring the complex phenomenon of building hidden cities around ritualistic areas. Cohen brilliantly uses his colour decisions. We notice his approach to form and vision, refolding the form to create an illusory three-dimensional structure, suggesting these secrets; flattening and re-shaping the space while conjuring thoughts of an explosion of society and culture.

Nathan Cohen, Maya II (2007), 60 x 56 x 2.5 cm

In Polyphonic Colours Kubota responds to the complexity of Bernard Cohen’s drawings. But she also adds a sense of her own architectural style, perhaps gleaned from her personal experience of Shinto temples. She emphasises meditation and discipline in what lies beneath the painting. The light ochre ground structure appears to be painted with a silicone shaper to articulate the circular network of interlocking parts. The surface feels delicate, each mark made with a single unmodified gesture. Floating on top of this oculus structure, the placement of each form calls to mind the geometric shape of lancet windows, with their curved triangles in place of circles. The structure is developed through the use of quatrefoil elements which make up partially overlapping circles of equal diameter. The final layer feels sharply defined by optical ambiguities, accentuating a system of multiple helicopter forms that spin like spiral leaves. I like the way the composition shifts into the white framing, taking our eye out for a moment from the inseparability of shape and colour, animating the fluidity of form.

Reiko Kubota, Polyphonic Colours (2013), 100 x 100 cm

The physical presence of Bernard Cohen’s most recent painting Foxheads seen in London contrasts cleverly with his 1963 work Untitled #2. Foxheads feels as though it probably began with a set of drawings. But it also feels deeply influenced by Bernard Cohen’s trips to the New Mexican desert, encountering kit foxes, Mexican wolves and coyotes. The pulsating structure feels triggered by the experience of our nightly encounters with London foxes staring at us defiantly, caught in the car headlights. But Cohen gives us a fresh perspective through his precisely constructed architectonic scaffold. This work has a rhythmic freedom which suggests scurrying and clawing but also brings a sense of the natural and man-made worlds combining. Untitled feels more automatic in the way the composer links the work together, capturing a more psychological sense of chaos and balance. Cohen takes us through a journey of colour changes. The foreground sky-trails start off as acid lime green, turning deep orange, then pale green, then lightly connected to a cadmium red trail. It’s a dance of identity that this exhibition unfurls for the viewer.

Bernard Cohen, Fox Heads - Seen in London (2023) 105 x 145 x 4 cm

Bernard Cohen, Untitled #2 (1963)

These three artists build a world of experiences through materiality, using a complexity of surfaces and adding elements of sound and history. Both intimate and expansive, this exhibition engages our senses through a rational and chaotic balance, allowing the journey to shine through.