Reivew at Caelum Gallery

Cote comes across as an artistic cowboy, lassoing his forms with skeins of flung pigment like Buffalo Bill Cody on mammoth canvases that suggest the expansive scale of the Old West. At the same time - since Cote often embeds rocks, sea shells, crystals, screws, nails, masks, broken glass, old picture frames, and even whimsical 3-D figures of butterflies festooned with white feathers into his thick impasto surfaces - there's also a hint of the funky 1980's East Village found-object funk assemblage ala Julian Schnable and Jean Michel Basquiat in his explosive compositions. Add the Post Pop-Comic sensibility of an artist who cites “science fiction and the universe” as two of his major enthusiasms, the natural physicality of a kid who grew up playing hockey, baseball, and football, the aggressive spirit of an adult who has earned his living playing and teaching tennis and has trained as competitive bodybuilding - and you may get some idea of what we are dealing with here.