Sign #1 , Sign #2 , Sign #3 were included in “Found Object Assembly”, Copeland’s 2009 solo show at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco. These rather austere collages were created by simply cutting and inverting the text from existing information signs. In Sign #2 , for example, the original image that presumably carried the message “NO RIDERS” was placed upside down. By cutting out some of the syllables and inverting and rearranging them, the message was rendered unreadable. By maintaining the overall integrity of the signs and their most legible visual characteristics (luminescent color, bold font, size and rectangular format), Copeland’s collages obscure language in favor of a “delirious optical disorientation.”
Bjorn Copeland (along with his brother Eric) is an original member of Black Dice, an experimental/noise band associated with the thriving musical movement around the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the late 1990s. Not surprisingly, Copeland’s visual practice is connected to that music scene, most obviously in his use of psychedelic designs associated with concert flyers which deploy hypnotic, almost acid-driven pop referents in a certain “op” manner. In many of his recent assemblages and collages, Copeland reuses discarded products, accumulated and found debris, as well as product packaging. As with his music, he rearranges and re-composes these preexisting structures, building complicated and intricate abstract patterns that aim to disorient and play with the viewer’s perception.
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
The application of bright colors and kitsch materials in Flower Tree manifests a playful comment on the influence of popular culture and urban lifestyle...
Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...
Milena Bonilla’s discursive practice explores connections among economics, territory, and politics through everyday interventions...
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China...
The video “Shangri-La” refers to the mythical city of James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon” written in 1933 and is exemplified in a film by Frank Capra which speaks of eternal youth in a city of happiness...
Uncertain Pilgrimage is an ongoing project in which Moore draws from his unplanned travels in recent years...
The Possibility of the Half by Minouk Lim is a two-channel video projection that begins with a mirror image of a weeping woman kneeling on the ground...
A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...
Continuing Oursler’s broader exploration of the moving image, Absentia is one of three micro-scale installations that incorporate small objects and tiny video projections within a miniature active proscenium...
While Untitled (Shuffle) presents the same formal characteristics as the rest of Berman’s verifax collages, this constellation of specific images inside the radio’s frames—the Star of David, Hebrew characters, biblical animals—have Jewish symbolism and attest to the artist’s lasting obsession with the kabala...