ARTISTS
Ian Cooper: OFF/OFF
Ian Cooper鈥檚 first solo exhibition at Halsey McKay presents five mixed-media sculptures that toy with themes of self-reflexivity, mirroring, retraction, and disembodiment via nuanced material translation and implied use potential. The show鈥檚 title toggles between darkly negative options, while playfully resisting a binary definition.
Off/Off (Double Barre), 2015 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 ones soft, dark and absorptive. Upon closer inspection, the chalk-white barres reveal quixotic, intermittent carvings 鈥� minor transgressions that evoke the undersides of grade school surfaces or stick-and-poke tattoos, and suggest both personal narrative and timelessness.
Ian Cooper鈥檚 first solo exhibition at Halsey McKay presents five mixed-media sculptures that toy with themes of self-reflexivity, mirroring, retraction, and disembodiment via nuanced material translation and implied use potential. The show鈥檚 title toggles between darkly negative options, while playfully resisting a binary definition.
Off/Off (Double Barre), 2015 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 ones soft, dark and absorptive. Upon closer inspection, the chalk-white barres reveal quixotic, intermittent carvings 鈥� minor transgressions that evoke the undersides of grade school surfaces or stick-and-poke tattoos, and suggest both personal narrative and timelessness.
Artists on show
