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of molecules and masks

THE TESSELLATED PORTRAITS OF JOEL COOPER

Photo by Jane Araújo

Since the year 2000, a number of origami artists have been exploring the artistic potential of tessellation, a series of forms that are repeated to create a pattern that fills a plane with no gaps or overlaps. The term derives from the Latin word tessera, the name for the individual tiles used to make mosaics. In origami tessellations, pleats are used to connect “molecules,” such as twist folds, together in a repeating fashion. Japanese origami artist Shuzo Fujimoto first explored the technique systematically in the 1960s, leaving dozens of patterns that established the genre among origami enthusiasts. In the United States around the same time, artist and computer scientist Ron Resch also patented some tessellation patterns, but it took until the 1980s for his work to became known in the origami community. Now, origami artists throughout the world are using tessellation to create spectacular works of 2-D, relief and 3-D paper sculpture. Most of these are abstract and geometric in their patterning and formations. However, American artist Joel Cooper (b.1970) has discovered that he can employ the technique to create highly detailed and expressive masks portraying historical and imaginary figures.

Cooper was born in San Francisco but grew up in Kansas, where he lives today. When he was about eight years old he first became interested in origami, devouring the first book that his parents bought for him on the subject. Although he was also interested in math and science, he decided to major in Fine Arts at college, studying oil painting, bronze casting, stone carving, ceramics and other traditional media, while continuing origami as a hobby on the side. In 2000, many years after he graduated, he was browsing websites on geometry and discovered origami tessellations. As he investigated tessellation techniques, he found what had been missing for him in the traditional art forms he had studied at college. “I could create art with geometry in a very direct way that I could not do with any other media,” explains Cooper. “Traditional origami may use geometry in an almost incidental way as a means to an end, but with origami tessellation the geometry is explicit.” Using this technique, Cooper was able to bring together his love of origami, his fascination with geometry and his experience of sculpture to make a new art form that was uniquely his own.

While most artists who have been exploring this technique have focused on the seemingly infinite variety of geometric patterning possible through tessellation, Cooper saw the potential for modeling figures and faces in the systematic folding made up of pleats and twists. “I found that manipulations of these shapes can create deformations in the plane of the paper, three-dimensional shapes, which is how I use origami to create these masks.” In his sculptural technique, the key is “transforming a surface rather than building a form from the inside out.” For the past fifteen years, he has been experimenting with the technique, different types of paper and finishes to create a series of folded relief portraits that deceive the eye and confound the brain of most viewers. In his work entitled simply Mask (2010), a perfectly formed face of a young man or woman seems to push itself through what appears to be a woven green fiber surface. But in reality, the work is folded, not woven, from a single sheet of paper using a pleated tessellation pattern. By manipulating and modeling the central area and flattening out the plaits, Cooper formed the face in relief. The green finish and sheen of the paper lends it a patina that reminds us of ancient bronze sculptures, further tricking our brains into forgetting the piece is formed from paper.

Sargon

Joel Cooper, USA 2014, paper, metallic pigment, craquelure glaze, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Caliban

Joel Cooper, USA 2014, elephant hide paper, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Hierophant

Joel Cooper, USA 2013, elephant hide paper, glaze, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Iron Aelfred

Joel Cooper, USA 2014, elephant hide paper, micaceous paint, iron oxide, shellac (Photo by the artist)

In his work Cyrus (2010), Cooper has folded a portrait of Cyrus the Great, founder and first king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Although created from paper using a highly geometric folding pattern, he was able to stylistically emulate Achaemenid sculptures from the sixth century BC, and very specifically the relief sculpture of a bearded man found carved onto a column capital that was excavated from a building at Persepolis, the ancient capital of Persia. Through meticulous folding, followed by wetting and shaping the paper, Cooper sculpted the high cheekbones, long nose and sensuous lips, and by using a tessellated pleat pattern, he emulated the snail-curl beard treatment found in many early Persian, Greek and Assyrian sculptures. Finally, his choice of gray paper evokes stone sculptures of this period, imbuing the sculpture with an ancient regality and gravitas.

In many of his sculptural portraits of historical and mythical figures, Cooper coats his paper to create the sheen and patina of ancient metalwork. In his sculpture of Creon, King of Thebes in Greek mythology, the figure has an expressive face and detailed headdress. However, it is the finish applied to the paper that gives it an ancient look. Cooper folded the mask from a single sheet of dark green elephant hide paper, which was then painted with a combination of interference paint and iridescent gold and copper paints. It was then given a final coat of tinted shellac to deepen the color. The effect is one of bright brass with a verdigris patina. On a recent work, Aelfred II (2014), which depicts the ninth-century English king Alfred the Great, he achieved an ancient-looking surface patina using a technique he learned from fellow origami artist Joseph Wu. By applying Kroma Crackle, a semi-opaque acrylic gel, to the paper after folding, he created texture and simulated the age and the oxidation of metal, giving the sculpture the appearance of being cast from bronze many centuries ago.

Pink Tessellation

Joel Cooper, USA 2013, elephant hide paper (Photo by the artist)

White Tessellation

Joel Cooper, USA 2013, elephant hide paper (Photo by the artist)

Gnome King

Joel Cooper, USA 2011, elephant hide paper, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Rex

Joel Cooper, USA 2015, elephant hide paper, glaze, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Green Face

Joel Cooper, USA 2010, elephant hide paper, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Constantine

Joel Cooper, USA 2015, elephant hide pape, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Iron Tessellation (detail)

Joel Cooper, USA 2015, elephant hide paper, micaceous paint, shellac (Photo by the artist)

Mask Folding Process

Joel Cooper, USA 2014, elephant hide paper (Photos by the artist)

Elf King

Joel Cooper, USA 2014, elephant hide paper (Photo by the artist)

Joel Cooper’s work is not limited to tessellated origami masks. He has also designed many two- and three-dimensional geometric tessellations that are exceptional works of complex patterning, including his Fujimoto Lampshade (2006), an illuminated tessellation named for Shuzo Fujimoto, the originator of the technique. However, it is Cooper’s masks that have earned him the greatest amount of attention in the origami world and beyond. As well as demonstrating Cooper’s interest in mathematics and his skill in the plastic arts, his works also reveal a fascination with the concept of history—and not just the ancient history that he is depicting in his mask portrayals of ancient kings, but also in the history of the creation of the objects themselves. When asked what draws him to tessellation as a style of origami, he replies, “All of the folds are visible, right there on the surface. The finished model is not just an object but also a sort of chronicle of its own creation. The appeal of origami art is not just in the finished piece, but awareness of how that piece is created.” With each and every molecule of his folded masks, Joel Cooper shares with us tessellated tales of not only how we have evolved over the centuries as humans, but also how we continue to evolve as creative, artistic beings.