new work by artist peter coffin

artwork, part of ‘the possibility of an island’, on show until 21/03/2009 at MOCA at goldman warehouse in miami.

new york- based artist peter coffin explores various models of perspective. in his sculptures, installations, photographs and videos, he examines our knowledge and interpretation of the world with curiosity and wit, borrowing from numerous disciplines, such as art history, science and new age beliefs to test his ideas about the way things work and exist. his largest installation ever in the UK, peter coffin projects a 360- degree aerial view of japanese gardens along the 90-metre curved wall of the barbican art gallery. in japanese garden design the use of illusionist effects such as overlapping elements, shifts in scale and multiple points of focus combine to give the viewer an abstract and heightened sense of reality. this spatial ambiguity of japanese gardens and its illusionary affects are exaggerated by coffin’s projection. on show from 11/02/2009 to 10/05/2009

at the saatchi gallery in london, coffin filled a room with over 40 silhouette cut-outs of sculptural icons such as robert indiana’s LOVE (1966). a video at the far end of the gallery featured stock footage of landscapes from the air. coffin’s hope was that visitors would choose certain of his ‘props’ and put them in the way of the projection so that they would appear as floating shadows over the countryside – silhouettes of silhouettes of images, doubly liberated from whatever their contexts once were.

sculpture silhouette prop (a. rodin ‘the thinker’ 1880) at the saatchi gallery , 2007