Constant State of Coconut was a collaborative exhibition between artists Paul Cowan and Michael Hunter. It was presented in the DOCUMENT booth at the Fall 2011 MDW Fair.

Paul Cowan and Michael Hunter, two Chicago based artists who address both the playful and conceptual with casual paintings, deflated musical notes and bold visual lines. Both artists hold a strong sense of humor in their approach to working with traditional gestures and materials they deconstruct the ideas of painting. Paul Cowan’s “fishing lure” paintings, stretched monochromes and printed fabrics are pierced with actual fishing lures. Both artists employ minimal and abstract painting qualities with Michael Hunter’s paintings of thick vertical lines and dark sculptural angles which contrast with Cowan’s limp and listless white “notes” draping on the floor and hanging from music bars jutting out from the wall.

Graduating in 2009 with his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michael Hunter combines traditional with the everyday and finds a formal quality within these everyday objects. Artworks are approached with a level of spontaneity and celebration of the chance encounter.

Paul Cowan received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He challenges and questions the tropes and conventions of painting and the art object as a whole by explicating referencing the history of painting and modernism.