Interpreting the Natural: Contemporary Visions of Scholars' Rocks: Mark Cooper

STATEMENT

Integral to my art is the idea that the sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts. The components work in conversation, forming a visual and metaphoric language. This language of collage/assemblage is a catalyst for individual viewers associations and perceptions that impacts brain functions in the viewers in a different way than a linear narrative. The inclusion of a variety of approaches to visual language from gestural marks to graffiti/cartoon like imagery, art historical references, biological forms as well as the occasional individual contributions of collaborators to the conversation amplify this. It combines components with a specific history and de-contextualizes them in relationship to each other. The diverse materials and techniques – with imagery that is drawn, painted, glazed, and reproduced photographically on ceramics, wood, canvas, walls, and paper – reference cultural history, global influence, and individual artistic expression. Although the work consists of many elements of differing scales, media, color, texture, visual weight, and historic and global references and origins, it is interesting to consider the way in which the varied components co-exist in harmony and work as a unit to convey ideas about the shifting global culture, the development of far-reaching consumer markets, and the influence of these on the arts. The juxtapositions of the elements in the assemblage are meant to involve viewers in an internal discourse about the relationships put forward in a way that differs from a linear narrative. The juxtaposition also signifies the idea that truth and meaning are in a constant state of change. What might have been perceived to mean one thing in an isolated state can in fact represent something very different when put into a context. Apart from my individual practice, I spend a portion of my time on collaborative and public projects, and a portion teaching, lecturing, and mentoring.

BIOGRAPHY

MARK COOPER is an internationally recognized artist known for large-scale and site-specific installations. His commissions and grants vary from Boston Medical Center, Artist Fellowships through the Massachusetts Cultural Council (2011, 2017), a Gund Travel Grant (Japan and Korea), and an Open Society Fellowship among others. In 2006 he authored Making Art Together through Beacon Press. In 2013, he was a Foster Prize Finalists at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA) and included in New Blue and White at the Boston MFA.

Mark Cooper had major exhibitions at the National Museum of Fine Arts Hanoi, Vietnam, (December 2015), the University of Fine Arts (Hanoi, Vietnam 2015), the Doris Duke Mansion Museum (2015), the Yuan Art Museum (Beijing, China 2016) the Kemper Museum , Kansas City (2016), and Lesley University in 2017. As well as the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, the Corcoran Museum, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the City Museum of Paris, France, the Westlicht Museum in Vienna, Austria and in over one hundred individual and group international exhibitions.