Tessy Pfeffer Cohen | Depths, 2021

In Tessy Pfeffer- Cohen’s diptych, two canvases hang side by side, creating a continuous painterly field of material, layer, and movement. The relationship between the two parts of the work generates a fluid transition between different areas of the same space, with no clear hierarchy between them.
The oil paint is spread in layers of greens and patches of color, alternating between opaque and translucent. The result is a stable depth that does not open up to a clear vanishing point. The accumulation evokes a sense of a tangle reminiscent of ocean depths and an underwater perspective, where lines of orientation blur and the eye is drawn into a material density. Such a reading of the configuration can also apply to the urban system: layers of movement, accumulation, and overlap that do not merge into a single order, but rather coexist in a state of constant friction.
Thus, the painting is perceived as a mental space where the absence of fixed order allows for movement that does not converge around a center. The diptych functions as an open system of relationships between surface, depth, and movement—a system in which the abstract exists as a mode of continuous unfolding.