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Distortions
Jackie Cooper
May 2008
THE DISCONCERTINGLY BEAUTIFUL
SELF-PORTRAITS
OF JACQUELINE COOPER SANROMA
I.
Since I began to know Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá as an art student, as an artist and as an extraordinary person many years ago, I realized that she not only possessed many talents which made her an outstanding art student at the School of Plastic Arts of Puerto Rico but that someday she would become an important and consequent local and international artist. First, Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá established herself as an exquisite and original ceramist who was able to create sculptures that, within the realms of Modernist and Postmodern canons, were define by the artist’s own meanings of rhythms, harmonies and freedoms. The final product: precious three dimensional poems that invite us to sail, fly, understand the gifts of Life.
II.
At an excellent moment of a successful artistic trajectory in the field of sculptural ceramic Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá decided to embrace the limitless field of photography. And in no time she was not only recognized and valued for the power and originality of her composition but was invited to take part in important projects such a as PHOTO-MIAMI (Art Basel) 07. Immediately the word spread around that Puerto Rico had, together with Tristan Reyes, Jason Mena, and Rafi Claudio, another powerhouse in the art medium, which until recently, belonged to a generation of older photographers – photographers of the Quality of Hector Mendez Caratini, Victor Vazquez, Johnny Betancourt and Nestor Millan, just to name a few.
III.
In this exhibition, which Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá decided to title DISTORTIONS, the artist presents a growth of awesome portraits – self-portraits! – in which, by using a complex procedure of reflections, she “captures” and “frees” herself in a brilliant dialogue with artists as different as Francis Bacon and Susana Espinosa, Pablo Picasso and David Hockney, Man Ray and Jean Michel Basquiat, Willen De Kooning and Gerard Richter.
The artist does not want us to see her “real” face but her “distorted” face, an effective metaphor/resource to present herself totally vulnerable yet free. Does she succeed? Indeed she does! This exhibition is definitely one of the best, most provoking aesthetic and ethic challenges presented by a local gallery in years.
IV.
But le us begin by placing her present discourse in the right perspective. Portraits and self-portraits have a long history. They are as old as the Egyptian civilization dating 4,700 years ago, and acquire a new much later, during the Roman Republic – especially during the second half of the first millennium B.C. But it is not until the Renaissance that they become one of the most important art manifestations. During the Renaissance they clearly contained/presented two of the main canons that defined painting in this period: perspective and psychological depths. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” would be a perfect example. What came after include from Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s (Milan, 1527-1502) surrealist fruits/vegetables/flowers portraits to and Warhol’s awesome portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Mao, Mohammed Ali or Mick Jagger. In the field of photography, portraits and self-portraits will constitute a great avenue for photographers to prove their talents, and the examples are many: – from Nadar to Avedon, from Dorothea Lange to Bert Stern, from Mapllethorpe to Serrano, from Wilhelm von Gloeden to Pierra and Gilles.
V. Each one of the self-portraits Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá presents in this show is a provoking approach regarding how she sees herself and how she wants us to see herself under the existentialist approach that we have always seen/read/understood from a distorted point of view. Each one of her faces/masks/presences (which have not been digitally manipulated but are present as shot) is not only an extremely dramatic aesthetic experiment (how she produces each image is not a secret but part of the magic of her work) but a powerful statement within the realm of an intelligent post-Feminist discourse. But if that was not enough, the artist effectively incorporates as part of each self-portrait the definitions of the key words related to the concept of distortion/deconstruction/construction of a visual/emotional/intellectual/spiritual self.
VI.
Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá has convincingly used the definitions as an integral part of each of her works of art. The artist has patiently photographed each definition which, together with the self-portrait, creates a complete work of art that it is not only visual but intellectual/didactic at the same time. She wants, us, the viewers to begin our process of deciphering and interacting with each one of these binomial works of art. And although she is giving us some directions, our own compasses are as good to interpret these “mirror” images – which at the end are also mirrors of ourselves.
VII.
It was only three years ago that Jacqueline Cooper Sanromá began experimenting in the field of photography and, although she continues her work as a ceramist/sculptor; this new medium can only be understood as real epiphany for this formidable artist who is not afraid to become vulnerable in her magnificent self-portraits.
MANUEL ALVAREZ LEZAMA
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