manager

source: saatchi-gallerycouk

TINTIN COOPER
Born in Thailand. Lives in: London
Slade School of Fine Art, UCL

My work takes its starting point from icons/images of masculinity, heroism and male identity, which are subsequently deconstructed through the mediums of sculpture, installation and collage. In the piece below, The Manager Strikes Back (2011), various cultural elements from different times are bought together, such as Star Wars-light sabres, popular football culture and ancient roman propaganda. (The sculpted busts portray football managers Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho and Alex Ferguson) I feel that the merging of these different iconic images reflects what is constantly happening to images in general today, which are reproduced across various visual platforms, and are deconstructed, morphed and re-assembled through the mass media and the Internet. I am curious to know whether this ‘montage’ most closely reflects the way in which we perceive images today (we often say we are ‘bombarded’ by images)- where there is no hierachrchy, or obvious historical categories.
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source: beautifuldecay

Bangkok-born artist Tintin Cooper‘s collages weave different images in popular media, such as sporting figures, to cut away the different faces and obscuring their identity. The themes of her work highlight society’s obsession with celebrity, and undermines this illusion by forming work that seems to shatter her subjects from within. More after the jump.