Brian Cooper
Region: Pacific Coast
Principally, my work focuses on abstract public sculpture as a crossroads between art and the general public. There is no blessed white cube to frame the work. Entropy takes over. Graffiti now competes for attention. These sculptures "plop" themselves down within the landscape. They have an alienating presence. They are simultaneously victims and aggressors.
Formally, the paintings further this conflict by providing compositional transitions from the common and mundane which then give way to the cleanliness and purity of abstraction. The base and material transcend to idea and near formlessness.
Furthermore, these expressive modern abstract forms are interpreted by a highly representational or illustrational style which only complicates its hierarchical relationship.
These paintings serve to illuminate the long discussed, awkward place art has in our world. These conflicts of high and low, of elitism and populism, of the concrete and abstract still have their place in our cultural discussion, especially when the boundaries of each have never been more unclear.