Cooper & Gorfer

Cooper & Gorfer: Sirens, the premier solo show of the artist duo in China is on show at Fotografiska Shanghai from 25th April 2024 to 4th August 2024. In Sirens, Cooper & Gorfer create a fictitious tribe of women in different states of transformation. Birthed from a library of female bodies and rituals, the artists reconstruct a mythological dynasty inspired by the transformative powers of immortal goddesses, their use of power, magic, and vengeance.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

From unique mix media collages to artworks arising from in camera sets – photography is blended with painting and caricature, visualizing and illustrating women wielding supernatural power, who are alluring, enchanting and perhaps dangerous. They explode from the frames that contain them, towering above the viewer.

The initial idea for constructing the figures came from using the surrealist game Cadavre Exquis, where the artists created a shared body by dividing it into two concealed halves. Resulting in unexpected associations and proportion. Bodies that are never entirely their own, with shared limbs that belong to several women simultaneously.

The line between what is real and what is imagined is mirrored in Cooper & Gorfer’s technique, with those collage pieces symbolizing the protective layers we mask ourselves with. Cooper & Gorfer’s imagery stems from personal accounts of vulnerability, playing with our own inner demons and desires, and how they manifest in the body. Breaking out of preconceived notions of femininity, the work is a bold declaration of the right of the female body to occupy space, both literally and figuratively. Loving mystical and avenging, the Sirens is a testimony to vulnerability and a force to be reckoned with. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Cooper & Gorfer comprises the artists Sarah Cooper (US, 1974) and Nina Gorfer (AT, 1979) who began their collaboration in 2006. Their work centers around themes of illusion, memory, and dislocation, illustrating the malleability of identity through layered pictorial collages of the female experience. The duo’s work departs in photography, and ranges from physically layered collages with painted and embroidered materials, to photographs of disassembled images in different states of ephemeral montage. The complexities of their subjects are reflected in the process and the fragmentation of the artwork’s surfaces.