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Justin Cooper: Cynicism and Belief
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Solo Exhibition
Good Mother Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
June 6, 2025
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Los Angeles–based contemporary artist Justin Cooper is presents Cynicism and Belief, a solo exhibition at Good Mother Gallery, located at 5103 W. Adams Blvd., 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.”
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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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