orly cogan:
behind the lens & through the Needle

September 10 - October 24, 2026
PRESS RELEASE

Opening Reception: September 10, 2026

Celebrating our 35th year and kicking off the fall season in our newly constructed gallery space on the fourth floor of the famed West Chelsea Arts Building we are pleased to present:  Orly Cogan: Behind the Lens & Through the Needle.

Long celebrated for her hand-stitched feminist embroidery artwork, Orly Cogan debuts a compelling new body of work that expands her distinctive practice by bringing photography and fiber art into a whimsical, imaginative dialogue. 

Through needle and thread, she reveals the hidden energies embedded within works of art and the spaces in which they are displayed. By calling forth magical worlds concealed within art fairs, galleries, and museums, Cogan suggests that the act of viewing art can itself become a creative act.

Nature weaves through many of these works in lush bouquets of blossoms, where black-and-white imagery merges with intricate embroidery and richly layered three dimensional textures. Hidden among the flowers and foliage are unexpected moments of wonder waiting to be discovered. With subtle nods to the art of dance and the rhythms of the natural world, these pieces exist between memory and imagination, carrying an ethereal sense of profusion in which the stitched and the photographed, the tangible and the dreamlike, intertwine.

Seen as a response to Susan Sontag’s suggestion that photographs are neat “slices” of life forever frozen in time, Cogan’s hand and needle breathe life into pictures, an overtly feminine touch that yields a creative abundance, at times forcing the artworks to spill out of their frames. Cogan’s handwork, partnering with the mechanics of the photographic image, explores the tension between speed and slowness, reproduction and singularity. These works propose that meaning is not fixed within the image but emerges through encounter and engagement. It is within this space between photograph and thread, reality and invention, object and viewer, that the familiar is unsettled, allowing something unexpected to come vividly into being.