"Andrea Cote utilizes her body as the principle tool by which she manipulates the conventions of material, time and space. Cote's practice often revolves around the concept of full self-exposure under the guise of mediated anonymity. Her physical presence is always experienced front and center, while her identity is simultaneously obscured through self-imposed techniques and parameters."
- Brian Balderston, Catalog
Bodies of/at Work, 2007
"Drawing from different parts of her body, from hair, to nose, ear, lips, labia, hands, feet, and fingers, Andrea Cote has worked to break down the gap between body and artwork, moving not between art and life so integral to Rauschenberg and art of the 60s, but between art and body. Cote's bodily-oriented work is heir to the feminist women performance artists who use their bodies in direct and often harsh presentations of the ideologies of femininity. More typical of Cote's generation of women artists interested in the material nature of the female body, the ideological resonances are reduced and the emotional impact is made subtler in order to reflect a more complex, nuanced, and individual response. Rather than specific bodies, the viewer is asked to translate and empathize with an indirect bodily act.
"Cote's wall drawing in this exhibition, however, has a different life of its own. As one enters the gallery, the image is reminiscent of the macro space of galaxies, it has an actuality to it of hair shorn or lost: beautiful continuous patterns of long heavy hair with needle-thin wisps escaping into the curves and sinuous lines of the thicker hair strands. On approach, the mass of wispy strands call to mind hair left in bathtubs and on beauty salon floors, throws one immediately and intensely into the micro space of repulsive physical abjection, of bodily leavings. The hair has been transformed from a substance belonging to the human body, to excess detritus."
-Patricia Matthews, Catalog
Absence/Excess/Loss, 2007
Excerpts from Articles & Reviews
"...Yo! Contemporary Self-Portraits, a group exhibition consisting of photography, video and other work by six young and emerging artists. Among them is Andrea Cote, a multidisciplinary artist who uses her body as a subject for photographs and videos, the artist fragmenting and distorting her image using mirrors and optical devices and then recording the result. Simple enough in conception, these images are nonetheless deeply unsettling.
- Benjamin Genocchio, The New York Times, Sept 2007
"In Pan Am's project room, Andrea Cote livens things up with her installation Cut featuring a video projection, photography, and a wall painted with clumps of her own hair.... Cote appears to raise questions of mortality and loss with her show, but does so in a fashion in which her hair is transformed into art by the grace of hope rather than a descent into morbidity... draw attention through works reflecting on the terrors and erratic nature of life, and the desire for tranquility they inevitably provoke."
- Carlos Suarez de Jesus, Miami New Times, Nov 2007
"Looking at the images, the question that pops up is "What am I looking at?" ...She is exploring the limits of the image of the body and the pictorial space: there is a fine border trespassed in terms of imaging... She is taking advantage of the use of negative space, like Japanese NO-Theatre, where the negative space is as important as, if not more, than the 'positive.'
- Irina Leyva Perez, Wynwood Art Magazine, Nov 2007
"Along the major wall in the gallery, spidery black tendrils form a border. It is Hair Fall, a painting by Andrea Cote. Creating on site, the artist dipped her own hair through acrylic paint and then "printed" the walls. The piece leans heavily into performance art, looks a lot like ink slowly dissolving into some unknown liquid and is chock-a-block full of political and psychological interpretations."
- Shirley Dawson, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, May 2007
"Long strands of black hair scribble the wall to the left of the steps leading to Gallery 10 at the Delaware Art Museum. They were not pulled from the head of the Brooklyn artist Andrea Cote, although her body is the medium she most often taps for installations and performances.
Rivulets of black paint hold the artificial clumps to the wall, turn the corner and continue up another wall, finally ending their vinelinke sprawl on an I-beam above.
Hers isn't the first work you'll see at Fever Pitch: New Work from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists... but Cote's installation is the most curious visual introduction to an exhibit that can engage visitors without ostracizing those who fear not getting it."
- Christopher Yasiejko, The News Journal, Delaware Online, Jan 2007
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