COOPER (artist)

COOPER (Brian Cooper (born 1976), the artist changed his name to a mononymous title in all capital letters in 1993) is an American artist known for sculptures and assemblages that exist as meditations on death, man's emotional capacities and struggles for power. COOPER was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He lives and works in Alaska.

COOPER's sculptures are often made from various found objects, wood, electrical devices, fabric, paper, and industrial hardware items.

The subjects of COOPER's projects are often related to investigating the world at dusk, attempting to describe visually the moment when it is precisely not day, or night. The work always involves some element of darkness, and intentional obscurity- such as a wall mounted fountain that recycles a miniature black river, or models of caves where light disappears before the viewer into a simulated tunnel. These themes continue into works that involve timed mechanical devices, operating like old time Houses of Horror, illusion, trickery or a spook-ride from a traveling carnival, and other works such as translucent layered drawings depicting human turmoil surrounded by floating objects and depiction.

Other characteristics in his work are unpainted wood with the liberal use of chemical binders and tinted epoxy resins, heavy paint drips, a mixture of highly crafted items merged with shoddy construction debris, sewn materials, and the deliberate elevation of common hardware to a visual language. The style of COOPER's artwork falls into a steampunk aesthetic crossed with American historical references. His work "Our American Cousin" (2001) for example, is a large installation piece consisting of a cave, video projection device, and custom costume elements. Art writer Jocelyn Adele Gonzalez comments, "The work is simultaneously humorous and distressing, and at some point lies on the edge of being socio-political. There is indubitably an integration and simultaneity of subjects that intertwine to present the viewer the episteme of the post modern condition where appropriations, simulacrum and parodies go beyond mere pastiche."

In January 2007, COOPER gave an interview to ArtCircuits Magazine on the subject of the 2008 exhibition "Seven Years Bad Luck" he is quoted saying "[I am inspired by] what you don't know, what happened in the house before you lived there, what's under the grave." These macabre intentions have a sinister humor applied with long poetic titles attached to them, for example, the 2002 drawing called "Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, Then Call Me Tomorrow" or the 2008 sculpture enigmatically labeled, "Black Lungs: Ever notice how all artists are super-sensitive, temperamental, selfish crybabies, and it only gets worse as they get older and continually more bitter. The long dark tea time of the soul right before death and then your taxes—now, imagine a world with two Elvis’s, twin brother performers. Best to die young and famous. In her hand, a faded Polaroid of her white Corvette plunged head first into the telephone pole, totaled beyond repair."

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