Anne Cooper, who describes herself as a recovering potter, finds her muse in beautifully rendered drawings and mixed-media works in her solo show titled “Viridis” at Artspace 116.
The 11-piece installation features simply designed bare wood stands supporting drawings on plaster-covered panels, framed wall pieces including highly detailed drawings of seed forms on cement and plaster tablets, and two sculptural constructions.
The construction titled “Viridis, 2008” consists of nine cube-shaped containers filled with damp soil and seeds that sprout into oat and flax grasses. When I visited, the crop had just been changed from long-bladed grasses to fresh seeds, so the seeds had not yet sprouted.
The whole show has a greenhouse feeling with its open work tables and almost scientific drawings.
Cooper's “Herbidus, 2005” consists of three wall-mounted shadow boxes each filled with nine rectangular layered and textured low relief fragments. Each fragment is covered in copper leaf with a red border that lends an Asian shrinelike quality to the three pieces.
Due to the limitations of the gallery space, “Herbidus, 2005” is hung on two walls. It would be much more powerful on one wall.
Cooper's semen series consists of nine pencil drawings on thick cement and plaster tablets evocative of miniature lithography stones. The tablets are presented in sets of three in each of three shallow glass-covered wooden shadow boxes. The seeds are presented from a bird's-eye view as if randomly scattered on a flat surface. Patterns and rhythms, however, emerge from the ebb and flow of the interacting forms.
When Larry Poons painted his 1960s series based on small ellipses floating in space, he said he wanted them to look arbitrary like fallen leaves. The trick to Poons' compositions was an underlying grid with its numerous intersections acting as placement points for Poons' compass. No matter where Poons drew his ellipses, the grid created an invisible structure. Fans of the “Numbers” TV series or real mathematicians know that apparently chaotic natural forces inevitably create patterns.
The patterns and flow in Cooper's drawings may not be grid based but they exude the presence of an underlying structure.
Throughout the show various elements are presented in repetitions of threes and nines. In the realm of symbols, numbers have meaning. The number three is associated with spiritual synthesis and the resolution of dualistic conflict. The number nine is related to transformation as well as the fusion of the corporal, intellectual and spiritual worlds.
The show's title, “Viridis,” relates to the color green emblematic of life, growth and other positive forces. Cooper opens the show with nine drawings of weed seeds on plaster-coated plywood. The beauty of their forms belies their weed status.
In Cooper's world everything that lives has positive potential.
When the Kathleen Shields Gallery closed several years ago, minimalist art almost disappeared from the Albuquerque art scene.
Cooper's “Viridis” installation may be considered too hot for some lovers of the mostly cool and aloof minimalist genre but many others will find balm for their yearning spirits. The overall show is well crafted; more complex than a first glance takes in and visually rewarding if you take time to look.
If you go
WHAT: Anne Cooper: “Viridis,” a mixed-media installation with 11 drawings and constructions
WHEN: Through June 20. Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Call 245-4200.
WHERE: Artspace 116, 116 Central SW
HOW MUCH: Free
