Justin Cooper: Carousel

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Solo Exhibition
Summerjax Studios, Culver City, CA 
May 17, 2024

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Los Angeles–based artist Justin Cooper presents Carousel, a solo exhibition at Summerjax Studios in Culver City, CA. The exhibition offers a meditation on cycles—of desire, consumption, identity, and disappearance. Cooper’s practice is rooted in recontextualization and the presence of absence, assembling art objects that probe the aesthetics and politics of taste, class, sexuality, and consumerism. Across sculpture, installation, and collage, his work evokes a constant tension between attraction and detachment. In recent years, Cooper has focused on the objectification of cultural icons and their disposal—investigating how the creation and destruction of meaning often occur simultaneously. “The shiny object pulls you in,” he says. “People watching, waiting for their chance to get on while others get off. The ‘one-on, one-off’ never stops, and can become disorienting—sometimes even dysfunctional.” Carousel stages this dynamic as a visual and spatial experience. Using materials with seductive surfaces and layered references, Cooper extends a language of aesthetics that aims to defy expectation and illuminate difference. “The reason I make the object or picture in the first place is to deal with the idea,” he explains. “Once I’ve distilled it into its most salient form, it allows the viewer to recognize emotions from their own life—or better yet, to discover a new perspective entirely.”

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