Tony Cokes’s video artwork uses quotes from writings by philosophers, musicians, politicians, and cultural figures. Placing these words on brightly colored, presentation-style backgrounds, Cokes then sets them to soundtracks of popular music from Drake to Morrissey. Through these juxtapositions, Cokes’s work invites us to engage with political ideas and shared social conditions, from the power of the media to celebrity culture.

For his Up Close commission, Cokes presents studies for a new body of work titled Of Lies & Liars. Alternate blue and red slides display quotations from journalist David Frum’s Atlantic article “This Is Trump’s Fault.” Cokes sets Frum’s words, which indict the current administration’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, to music by artists from the Postal Service to Lali Puna. The vignette-style videos are a return to Cokes’s ongoing exploration of evil in Western philosophical thought and its role in the structuring of society, this time in the context of the denials of scientific fact related to the pandemic. These video sketches will be released on this page and The Shed’s Instagram and YouTube accounts on Sundays at 6 pm EST from August 9 to September 6 and will serve as the foundation for a future work by the artist.

In the summer of 2019, a selection of Cokes’s work, including the new commission Before and After the Studio (2019), was presented in the exhibition Collision/Coalition at The Shed. The videos in this exhibition arranged appropriated materials including pop music and news articles in a confrontational collage to explore the relationship between the artist, the artist’s studio, and gentrification.