Justin Cooper, Thread
an At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago project
April 22-May 31, 2008
Performance: Wednesday, April 23, 6:30 pm
Reception: Wednesday, April 23, 5-8 pm
Closing Night Performance pitting preservation vs. destruction: Saturday, May 31, 4:30 pm
Thread offers Justin Cooper's first large-scale sculpture/installation, the exhibition is bookended with two performances featuring Cooper with Noelle Mason and Ross Moreno. The installation and performances interact intimately, like lovers, as well as ignore each other completely, like lovers. Meanwhile, several dichotomies arise: temporality vs. permanence; abstraction vs. personification; audience vs. performer; speech vs. gesture; observed impossibility vs. unseen possibility; low profile vs. high body mass; hard factual accounting vs. ethereal hazy accounting; retention vs. loss; celestial chimes vs. terrestrial drums; object vs. space; cold equations vs. heartwarming pseudoscience; eye-witness account vs. eye-witness account; acting vs. re-acting; realistic expectation vs. idealistic projection; unexplained giant fur-covered paper bag vs. explained giant fur-covered paper bag etc...
Justin Cooper, a sculptor and performance artist, has created projects nationally in California, Maine, New York, and Oregon; internationally in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, and Sweden; and locally at Links Hall and the Chicago Cultural Center. In 2007 Cooper attended Skowhegan and was awarded a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. He received an MFA in 2005 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sponsored in part by Smith and Hawken and Tekni-Plex.
Gallery Text
Reviews
Flavorpill -- April 25, 2008