פיטר קופין
ピーター·コフィン

spiral staircase

source: saatchigallery
Often using art history as a departure point for his surreal reinventions, Peter Coffin’s work engages with pre-conceptions about cultural ideals to challenge established perception and interpretation. Taking the form of a giant hand leaning happy-go-lucky against a plinth, Coffin’s Untitled (Unfinished Hand) humorously personifies the tropes of traditional sculpture. Reconfiguring the idealism of modernist art where material purity and the authority of the artistic gesture were held sacrosanct, Coffin monumentalizes the ‘integrity of the artist’s hand’ in wooden planks and wire mesh – the bare bones stuff of modelling.
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source: flashartonline
There is a tendency to clutter things up, to try and make sure people know something is art, when all that’s necessary is to present it, to leave it alone. I think the hardest thing to do is to present an idea in the most straightforward way. I think it was Jasper Johns who said that, “[It’s] sometimes necessary to state the obvious.” Still, how to proceed is always the mystery. I remember at one point thinking that someday I would figure out how to do this, how you do art — like “What’s the procedure here, folks?” — and then it wouldn’t be such a struggle anymore. Later I realized I would never have a specific process; I would have to reinvent it, over and over again. That was really depressing.
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source: artspace
Interested in the way people perceive and interpret, Peter Coffin’s conceptual interdisciplinary practice plays with both the limitations and possibilities of our perception. Drawing on art history, science, psychology, and epistemology, Coffin creates multimedia works that reassemble the world around us in a way that makes us question our preconceptions and gain new perspective.
Some of Coffin’s projects include constructing a UFO that was flown over the Baltic Sea and the coast of Brazil, assembling an elaborate industrial conveyor that carries balloons through a gallery space, and inviting musicians to serenade plants in a greenhouse. Coffin’s interest in the idea of a “collective unconscious,” that we all share a past and some basic perceptions, informs his reinventions of reality.
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source: overmundo
Peter Coffin nasceu em 1972 em Berkeley na Califórnia, e é formado em Arte pela University of California em Davis (1995) e Carnegie Mellon University (2000). Autor de instalações, vídeo, esculturas cinéticas e instalações sonoras com temática que se remete à New Age, à subconsciência, mas também a narrativa modernista. Seus trabalhos têm o caráter interdisciplinar. O artista usa várias mídias e cria em diferentes estilísticas. Mora e trabalha em Nova Iorque.
É representado pela Andrew Kreps Gallery, em Nova Iorque, Emmanuel Perrotin, em Miami e pela Herald Street, em Londres. As obras de Coffin foram apresentadas em várias individuais: na Wrong Gallery, no MoMa.
Peter Coffin, um dos mais renomados artistas contemporâneos, é considerado pelo Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), de Londres, como “um dos seis que mais colaboram para definir a prática artística do futuro”.