Muriel Guépin Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of digital and hand-altered photographs by American artist Emerson Cooper. "Mending the Labyrinth" is the artist's first appearance in an art gallery setting and his first solo show in the United States.
The exhibited body of work continues Cooper's practice which started many years ago in the form of plastered posters in the streets of New York City.
Emerson Cooper relentlessly collects vintage photographs and Victorian cabinet cards. He transforms them into meticulously constructed, psychologically charged artworks by using a mix of thread, paint, collage or digital manipulation. Small cut images and repetitive patterns such as lines, dots, numbers or letters, are omnipresent in his staged imagery to help transform a landscape or to hide a face. Used widely from the mid-19th century after the invention of albumen prints by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, the cabinet card remains a familiar visual object. Contemporaneous to the use of cabinet cards were the psychoanalytical theories of Freud and the high point of public interest in freak shows, and Cooper recalls these areas of interest simultaneously.
Cooper's images often allude to the sinister and plunge us headlong into the depths of identity and psyche, the real and the unreal, and the anguish of memory. Forever present in his somber yet intriguing images are Cooper's favorite themes of looming disaster, unspoken injury, survival and transcendence. But more importantly, Cooper's newly reconstructed worlds transpire his own attempts to "repair the universe" and convey his beliefs in everyday heroes, guardian spirits and the enduring after life. His unique and technically consummate approach makes him a significant proponent in this genre.
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 5, 2014, 6:30 – 8 pm
The exhibition will remain on view through July 6, 2014
