Von Coffin & Warren Neidich: Picnic for a N(n)ervous System
Gallery Gachet 9 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 1G4
Image courtesy of Gallery Gachet
Von Coffin & Warren Neidich: Picnic for a N(n)ervous System
Opening Reception July 10, 6–8pm
Artist Talk July 11, 4pm
Exhibition runs July 11, 2025–September 20, 2025
Gallery Gachet
9 W Hastings St., Vancouver, BC, V6B 1G4
In Picnic For a N(n)ervous System, Von Coffin and Warren Neidich estrange processes of attention, sense-making and cognition. Critically engaging with emerging theories of the embodied, embedded, enacted and extended mind, the artists use painting, neon and sculpture to activate uncommon neural pathways, modulating our world-making capacities towards the emergence of diverse neural architectures—and, correspondingly, new modes of thought and action.
Von Coffin works in sculpture, painting, and food service, examining colour and figure in new forms, both abstract and explicit. They think of it as “Neuroformalism” or “Caloric Abstraction”–something that equates the inner and invisible with canon. Small painted blocks are bits of information within sculptures, their colours carefully translated from common candies. A cozy paradox forms around this question: what does it mean for something to have a yellow colour and taste that “is” lemon or banana, but not be a lemon or banana? Von Coffin is a member of the artist run space Specialist in Seattle and runs an experimental sculpture park on their family's farm in Redmond, Washington.
Warren Neidich was trained in fine art, architecture, and medicine. In the past five years he has used texts, neon-light sculptures, paintings and photographs to create cross-pollinating conceptual works that reflect upon situations at the border zones of art, critical neuroscience and cognitive justice. He is the founder and director of the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art and the editor of An Activist Neuroaesthetics Reader (2021). He coedited the three-volume collection the Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism (2013, 2014, and 2017). The fourth edition of Neidich's Glossary of Cognitive Activism was recently published by Eris.
Curated by Sol Hashemi, Associate Curator and Operations Director.
Gallery Gachet acknowledges the generous support of Canada Council, BC Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver: Arts, Culture & Tourism.