Groove

48″ x 51″ x 5″
Mixed Media, Acrylic on a birch panel with dimensional wood & wire elements.

“Groove” (2025) offers perhaps the most explicit declaration that Côté’s paintings are also objects. The work projects from the wall with layered components, creating a relief that is both sculptural and pictorial. The palette, with black, warm neutrals, creams, and vivid orange, produces a sense of rhythm and syncopation. The protruding forms cast shadows that change as the light shifts, and those shadows become part of the composition. The painting grooves, not only as a metaphor for rhythm but as a literal channeling of space. The work makes the wall an active participant, because the wall receives the shadows, holds them, and thus becomes a secondary support. In this sense, Côté’s dimensional paintings propose a dispersed authorship. The artist constructs the object, but light composes the shadow, and the viewer’s movement edits the relation between them.