Incursion

30″ x 40″ x 1.5″
Mixed media: acrylic on birch panel with dimensional elements in wood.

“Incursion” (2024) is more austere, and in that austerity it clarifies Côté’s philosophical ambition. Large areas of black flank exposed wood, with slender vertical intervals that read like slits of light or architectural voids. The wood is not hidden; it is allowed to speak as material, as grain, as warmth against the black’s absorptive depth. Small protrusions at the top edge suggest an intrusion into space, a literal incursion beyond the boundary. Here the drama is minimal but intense. The painting becomes a study of threshold, of what it means for an image to be breached. The incursion is not violent; it is conceptual. It is the moment when a flat surface admits that it is not self sufficient, that it belongs to a world of objects and shadows.