Third Floor: A Room in Common
A RRASP & Rockella Sponsored Exhibition
Third Floor: A Room in Common
Curated by Jahlik Parkes and Aaron Benjamin Cohen
A collaborative installation by six artists working in close proximity on the third floor of Rockella’s Brown Bears Studios in East New York.
May 1 – 30
One Eyed Studios
1639 Centre St, Queens, 11385
OPENING NIGHT: May 8, 6-9pm
Participating Artists: Tarik Welch, Aaron Benjamin Cohen, Jean Rim, Cole Douglas, JAH-P Design, and Nima Azizpour
Third Floor: A Room in Common, curated by Jahlik Parkes and Aaron Benjamin Cohen, is a collaborative installation by six artists working in close proximity on the third floor of Rockella’s Brown Bears Studios in East New York.
The project reconstructs a shared interior—an imagined apartment space built through the distinct material practices of each artist. Rather than presenting discrete works, the exhibition treats space itself as the primary medium. Painting, textile, photography, and wood fabrication are translated into architectural elements—walls, partitions, surfaces, and objects—forming a fragmented yet cohesive domestic environment. Each artist contributes to the construction of the space, resulting in overlapping zones that reflect the realities of adjacency, cohabitation, and creative exchange.
The installation draws on the lived condition of being neighbors—sharing walls, sounds, and atmospheres—while maintaining individual identities. Boundaries blur between authorship and collaboration, private and collective space, structure and surface. Rooted in East New York and shaped by the daily proximity of the artists’ studios, the project reflects on how environments influence making, and how shared space produces dialogue across disciplines.
The exhibition will remain open throughout May, with an opening on May 8 and public engagement moments including artist talks and open studio access.
Participating Artists: Tarik Welch, Aaron Benjamin Cohen, Jean Rim, Cole Douglas, JAH-P Design, and Nima Azizpour
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Tarik Welch is a visual artist working at the intersection of photography and sculptural form, Tarik’s practice explores analog processes and the emergence of complexity from simplicity. His work draws from Caribbean lineage and examines the relationship between organic growth and technological evolution. Within the installation, his work operates as moments of reflection and memory—akin to windows, portals, or captured atmospheres.
Aaron Benjamin Cohen works with found materials, treating them as carriers of history and energy. Through layering, fragmentation, and reconstruction, his work evokes dense urban surfaces—walls shaped by time, intervention, and accumulation. In the installation, his contributions function as textured architectural surfaces, merging figures and environment.
Jean Rim’s practice transforms fragments of past work into new compositions, drawing from Korean traditions such as obangsaek, the five directional colors. Her work navigates identity, time, and material memory. Within the space, her textiles act as soft structures—thresholds, partitions, and connective tissue between zones.
Cole Douglas creates expressive, colorful abstract works that juxtapose nature and the Black experience. He blends gestural acrylic palette knife strokes with energetic oil stick lines to inspire reflection, growth, and the sowing of seeds. Leveraging these mediums, he creates active paintings that explore the possibilities of a fruitful Black future with markings reminiscent of earth, water, and flora intertwined with personal and collective memories. Through an intentional reconfiguration of Black values, he aims to create meaningful change for future generations. That is, the sowing of seeds in our garden For Third Floor, his paintings become part of the shared walls of an imagined home, grounding the space in the living memory of a collective future.
JAH-P Design is an architectural designer and fabricator, JAH-P Design bridges spatial design, woodworking, and cultural archiving. Within the project, he leads the spatial framework and material assembly of the installation, translating artistic practices into a cohesive constructed environment.
Nima Azizpour is an artist from Iran drawn to what’s been overlooked, materials that have lost their place, giving them a second life through his work. His art is about transformation, not just of objects, but of experience. Every piece is tied to his personal journey: migration, change, and the rebuilding of identity. He works across multiple mediums, from painting in charcoal, acrylic, and oil, to wood burning and carving, to restoring lighting pieces and creating carpet collages. He doesn’t separate techniques, he lets them collide and evolve into something unexpected. For this show, his work inhabits the space as both object and atmosphere, bringing the weight of displacement into the architecture of a shared home.