Ian Cooper
Ian Cooper’s mixed-media sculptures toy with themes of self-reflexivity, mirroring, retraction, and disembodiment via nuanced material translation and implied use potential. For example, Off/Off (Double Barre) (2015) is a sculpture that flips and dramatizes the image of an inactive learning space. Two wall-hung, waxed canvas panels allow for spectral ballet barres to protrude. Like handwriting practice templates, these four parallel lines offer themselves as training wheels (for possible and impossibly oriented bodies) while doubling as bodily limbs themselves. The canvas panels translate hard, reflective surfaces into soft, dark, and absorptive ones. Upon closer inspection, the chalk-white barres reveal quixotic, intermittent carvings–minor transgressions that evoke the undersides of grade school surfaces or stick-and-poke tattoos, and suggest both personal narrative and timelessness.
Cooper has had solo exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, Sandroni.Rey in Los Angeles, and CUE Arts Foundation in New York. His work has been presented in group exhibitions at Artist Curated Projects in Los Angeles, Planthouse in New York, Tracy Williams, LTD in New York, Klaus von Nichtssagend in New York, Nice & Fit in Berlin, Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich, Locust Projects in Miami, Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center, and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.
Courtesy of …
Ian Cooper’s mixed-media sculptures toy with themes of self-reflexivity, mirroring, retraction, and disembodiment via nuanced material translation and implied use potential. For example, Off/Off (Double Barre) (2015) is a sculpture that flips and dramatizes the image of an inactive learning space. Two wall-hung, waxed canvas panels allow for spectral ballet barres to protrude. Like handwriting practice templates, these four parallel lines offer themselves as training wheels (for possible and impossibly oriented bodies) while doubling as bodily limbs themselves. The canvas panels translate hard, reflective surfaces into soft, dark, and absorptive ones. Upon closer inspection, the chalk-white barres reveal quixotic, intermittent carvings–minor transgressions that evoke the undersides of grade school surfaces or stick-and-poke tattoos, and suggest both personal narrative and timelessness.
Cooper has had solo exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, Sandroni.Rey in Los Angeles, and CUE Arts Foundation in New York. His work has been presented in group exhibitions at Artist Curated Projects in Los Angeles, Planthouse in New York, Tracy Williams, LTD in New York, Klaus von Nichtssagend in New York, Nice & Fit in Berlin, Mai 36 Galerie in Zurich, Locust Projects in Miami, Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center, and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.
Courtesy of Halsey McKay Gallery
