what it is... my artist's statement

This blog focuses on my work as an artist. I will periodically post images and links to videos. Please feel free to feedback.

lane cooper – artist statement

General statement:
I have a hard time letting go of the body. I cannot let go of text. I approach text as a Gnostic – every read reveals. Every work is a text.

My process is poetic – semiotics and constructions – demonstrated meanings through context and (juxta)position, through construct and metaphor – art is the realm of the mind – The mind is the space in which reality is called into being, a place of conceit and connection.

My work strives to provide access to this space – to open “the doors of perception” – William Blake’s doors - not Aldus Huxley’s or Jim Morrison’s. Reading the works and critical analyses of Plato, Plotinus, Chomsky, Beuys, Bochner, Baldessari and Chin have influenced my thinking. I also enjoy reading Umberto Eco, et. al.

At its worst my work is didactic. At its best it is text – open and non-linear in which the audience is co-author.


Concerns which drive my work:
Epistemology – the study of the nature of knowledge, its possible validity

Metaphysical – an umbrella arching over the physical; extremely abstract or theoretical; without material form or substance; originating not in the physical world but somewhere outside it.

Language, the foundation of text and the material of the mind: frames, calls into being, allows conception, provides meaning. It originates not in the physical world but in the realm of the mind.


Gnosticism – “salvation” comes from learning esoteric “truths” that free humanity from the material world…

In application, the (re)reading of a text, and the (re)investigation of a set of ideas.

Agnosticism – not knowing and knowing not knowing; to question.

Material vs. immaterial; commodity vs. de-commodity; real vs. perceived value.