↳ Exhibitions

Bjorn Copeland at COOPER COLE

July 3, 2017

Artist: Bjorn Copeland

Exhibition title: Extra Medium

Venue: COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada

Date: May 26 – July 14, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and COOPER COLE, Toronto

COOPER COLE is pleased to present Extra Medium, a solo exhibition from Bjorn Copeland.

This marks Copeland‘s first solo exhibition in Canada.

The deconstruction and reassembling of objects and imagery, with the insertion of random variables, is an idea first explored by Brion Gysin. It is a process that lends itself to unpredictable end results that seem comparable to the way that life unfolds. Things seldom turn out the way that one would expect, and the ability to improvise and respond to predetermined decisions is an vital skill that contributes to the over all quality of existence (whether that be an object or an individual). A key idea behind improvising is the ability to embrace and relinquish control.

Making creative content out of the mundane cultural and societal detritus is essentially using decisions someone else has made. By reducing the source material down to its most basic and dominant formal or purposefully intended function, the basis for reconfiguration is set. It also serves as a way to participate in a highly saturated materialistic culture by side stepping the role of consumer. The process of recombining anything that has a negative value with other information or elements elevates the source material to something with a heightened conceptual, formal, or societal value. The aesthetic and conceptual results often achieve a certain tension that would be impossible to preplan. It is a type of reductive logic that allows for the separation of extraneous components that a viewer may associate with an object or image, forcing a different perspective.

Bjorn Copeland (b. 1975, Malone, New York, USA) received his BFA in 1998 with a focus in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA and his MFA in 2001 from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, USA. He is also one of the founding members of the seminal electronic rock band Black Dice. His artistic practice involved reclaiming the discarded waste of contemporary consumer society to produce collages, prints, sculptures and drawings that evince the influence of psychedelia and Pop art. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include COOPER COLE, Toronto, Canada; China Art Objects, Various Small Fires, Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Green Gallery, Milwaukee; Jack Hanley Gallery, CANADA, Museum of Modern Art, New York; MOCAD, Detroit, USA; David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Kunst(Zeug)Haus, Rapperswil, Switzerland. Copeland currently lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.