Peter Coffin » Saatchi Gallery

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (N. de St. Phalle ‘Snake Tree’ 1964)

Untitled (Unfinished Hand)

Untitled (Unfinished Hand)

Often using art history as a departure point for his surreal reinventions, Peter Coffin’s work engages with pre-conceptions about cultural ideals to challenge established perception and interpretation. Taking the form of a giant hand leaning happy-go-lucky against a plinth, Coffin’s Untitled (Unfinished Hand) humorously personifies the tropes of traditional sculpture. Reconfiguring the idealism of modernist art where material purity and the authority of the artistic gesture were held sacrosanct, Coffin monumentalizes the ‘integrity of the artist’s hand’ in wooden planks and wire mesh – the bare bones stuff of modelling.

Untitled (Spiral Staircase)

Untitled (Spiral Staircase)

Untitled (Spiral Staircase)

Untitled (Spiral Staircase)

Untitled (Spiral Staircase)

Coffin’s Untitled (Spiral Staircase) takes the idea of a simple architectural fitting to an absurd extreme. Reminiscent of Escher’s Infinite Staircase, Coffin’s winding steps are moulded into a circle, inexhaustibly twisting in impossible logic made real. By remodeling the steps, Coffin strips the staircase of its function, turning a thing which is normally engaged with physicality into a dizzying conceptual game. Through his humorous constructions, Coffin bridges art history and everyday experience, subverting the preconceptions of both.

Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props)

Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props)

Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props)

Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props)

Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props)

Around, About Expanded Field (Sculpture Silhouette Props)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (J. Dubuffet ‘Group of Four Trees’ 1969-72)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (L. Clark ‘Raw Cubismo’ 1969)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (J. Arp ‘Seuil Configuration’ 1977)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (R. Indiana ‘Love’ 1966)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (D. Smith ‘Voltri VIII’ 1962)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (P. Voulkos ‘Jupiter’ 1994)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (G. Anselmo ‘Untitled (Structure That Eats Itself)’ 1968)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (‘Venus of Willendorf’ 28,000 BC)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (Y. Klein ‘Blue Sponge’ 1959)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (J. Beuys ‘Fat Chair’ 1963)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (M. Puryear "Lever#3" 1989)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (M. Di Suvero ‘Aurora’ 1992-1993 )

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (B. Newman ‘Broken Obelisk’ 1963-69)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (R. Rauschenberg ‘monogram’ 1955-9)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (A. Calder ‘La Grande Vitesse’ 1969)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (B. Nauman ‘Untitled (Model for Trench Shaft and Tunnel)’ 1978)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (G. Bernini ‘the Ecstasy of St. Teresa’ 1645-1652)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (Easter Island Head)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (A. Rodin ‘The Thinker’ 1880)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (L. Nevelson ‘Drum’ 1976)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (J. Tinguely ‘Variation IV’ 1966)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (S. Le Witt ‘Incomplete Cube’ 1974)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (U. Boccioni ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space’ 1913)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (Cesar ‘Cesar’s Thumb’ 1967)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (R. Serra ‘One ton prop’ 1969)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (J. Koons ‘Rabbit’ 1986)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (A. Giacometti ‘Diego’ 1960)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (C. Brancusi ‘Endless Column’ 1935-38)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (A. Caro ‘Sculpture Three’ 1961)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (M. Ernst ‘Capricorn’ 1948)

Sculpture Silhouette Prop (K. Armitage ‘People in the Wind’ 1950)