Ian Cooper
Ian Cooper
Workspace Program Resident 2010
Extracting and reconfiguring set pieces and props from coming of age films and television programs, my work explores and unravels these media-constructed templates for the format of adolescence. Themes like isolation, longing, and escape are central to these tropes.
Chalice (2010) is derived from a poor quality paparazzi photograph of Blanket Jackson (son of the late pop star Michael Jackson), and is a extrapolation of the child’s hat and hair as observed in Star Magazine. Upside-down and hollow, with a black mass of tangled, wilted hair droops and drapes like the dead leaves of a neglected house plant. The baseball cap’s brim is adorned with a paper pulp recreation of the puffy paint gestures seen on Blanket’s actual hat: a dripping rainbow with the letters “L O V E” scrawled below.
The tragic spectacle of Blanket’s existence, pre-dates Michael’s untimely death, and was visually upstaged by his father’s enforced costuming while in public. Like some ad-hoc superhero, Blanket’s masks and hats accompany his fright-wig-like hair in gestures reminiscent of the adolescent charade of sub-culture identification: boiled-down hallmarks of skater, hip-hop, or goth style: oversized, unkempt, color saturated, adorned. Compounding this charade, Blanket’s inherent facelessness adds him to the motley crew company of such fictional personas as the invisible man, Orko, or virtuosic metal guitarist Buckethead.
In Chalice, Blanket’s hat and hair are realized in a slightly odd scale; an action further disconnecting the original source from reality. Whereas, Walt Disney designed buildings along his theme park’s Main Street to be constructed in 3/4 scale in an attempt to psychologically assuage the park’s guests into feeling empowered, important, or special, the scale employed in Chalice is created in direct opposition to Disney’s tactics. The 75% enlargement seeks to promote the off-kilter, alienating, awkward, and ultimately uncanny as the sculpture’s crux lies in it’s highlighting the absence of the head itself. Located somewhere between the abject grizzle of a Native American trophy scalp, and the gimmickry of a novelty Rastafarian hat with felt dreadlocks, the sculpture maintains the role of an empty chalice, or a hollow cavity, as much as it appears as a discarded or forgotten dress-up disguise. It is decidedly without content, unfilled, and absent.
—Matt Keegan
In the Studio
About the Artist
Ian Cooper (b. 1978, New York City, NY) received a B.S. in Studio Art from New York University in 2000. 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. He currently lives and works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. (Source: Artspace)
Related Projects & Links
Ian Cooper, New Works in Handmade Paper, Press Release, 2010.