Justin Cooper
Studio LA
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Justin Cooper: Dislocation
September 18, 2026
Justin Cooper Studio
Hermosa Beach, CA
Through a new body of sculpture, installation, painting, and collage, Dislocation examines how contemporary systems of power increasingly operate through distraction rather than persuasion, redirecting attention away from structural instability while normalizing uncertainty as a condition of everyday life.
The works in Dislocation occupy a space between familiarity and estrangement. Everyday objects, commercial materials, and cultural symbols are subtly displaced from their expected contexts, revealing the invisible frameworks that organize perception and shape collective experience. Rather than offering direct political statements, Cooper constructs situations in which absence, interruption, and ambiguity become active forces, compelling viewers to confront what has been overlooked, ignored, or deliberately concealed.
“Dislocation isn’t an event—it’s a condition. I’m interested in the subtle ways instability becomes normalized, where attention is redirected and familiar systems remain intact just long enough to hide that they’ve already begun to fail.”
The exhibition approaches dislocation as both a physical and psychological condition. Institutions that once promised stability—political, economic, cultural, and informational—appear increasingly unable to sustain coherent narratives. In their place emerges a landscape of perpetual distraction, where visibility itself becomes suspect and spectacle functions as a mechanism of control. Cooper’s work investigates this condition through a restrained visual language that emphasizes material presence while resisting fixed interpretation.
Throughout the exhibition, the work oscillates between concealment and disclosure. Objects operate simultaneously as sculpture and evidence, suggesting histories of use, authority, and erosion without resolving into singular meanings. Rather than depicting collapse, Dislocation examines the subtle processes through which meaning is displaced and attention is managed. The exhibition asks what remains visible when systems no longer function as intended, and how contemporary culture negotiates the growing distance between lived experience and institutional narratives.
Justin Cooper: Cynicism and Belief
June 6, 2025
Good Mother Gallery
Los Angeles, CA
The exhibition presents a dynamic body of work that interrogates the uneasy relationship between skepticism and conviction in today’s cultural climate. Through a series of sculptural installations, paintings, and collage, Cooper explores the fragile coexistence of hope and disillusionment in contemporary culture.
Navigating the interplay of irony and sincerity, Cooper questions whether belief can survive in an age dominated by cynicism—or whether cynicism itself has become a kind of belief system. Cynicism and Belief offers a nuanced, sometimes unsettling reflection on how we internalize ideologies, ideals, and doubts.
“I’m interested in the friction between earnestness and irony,” says Cooper. “This work isn’t about choosing sides—it’s about inhabiting the contradiction.”
Rooted in a culture of irony, disillusionment, and digital overstimulation, this new body of work examines the push and pull between faith and skepticism—two forces often seen as opposites, yet deeply entangled. Rather than offering clarity or resolution, Cynicism and Belief invites viewers to linger in the ambiguity, confronting the contradictions we carry every day.
“I’m not trying to resolve belief or dismiss cynicism,” Cooper adds. “I’m exploring the gray space in between—the space where most of us actually live.”
Justin Cooper: Carousel
May 17, 2024
Summerjax Studios
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.”