An Interview with Artist Justin Cooper

By Lauri Apple in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 6, 2009 9:25PM

School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA grad and current teacher Justin Cooper is known from here to Rio for his wacky artistic touch, with works that often incorporate a humorous performance element. Tonight, Monique Meloche Gallery in the West Loop hosts an opening of his latest work: Paranormaldise, in which he presents a series of sculptures manipulating mostly ready-made materials from familiar places like Home Depot or the Party Store. (6-9 p.m. 118 N. Peoria.) Recently he took some time to answer a few questions about his penchant for pumpkins and thing for party bling.

Chicagoist: What should we expect to see at the Monique Meloche show?

Justin Cooper: There will be four new sculptures, a photograph, video and all the drawings I've done in the last two years or so. This show is a bit of a departure for me as I won't be performing at the opening -- something I've always done. It's been interesting because people who are familiar with my work generally assume I'll be doing a performance, and when I tell them I'm not, they tend to be very surprised, confused, even angry. The lack of a performance kind of becomes a performance, and I like that.

C: The gallery announcement says that your new sculptures "spring Athena-esque from a cubicle-constructed notion that investigates the delicate line between vacation and hallucination." Can you elaborate?

JC: There is a constant onslaught on human sanity these days, and it's easy to lose the fight. These new works continue an ongoing investigation of this quiet (or not-so-quiet) madness that pervades our culture. Imagine working a job you hated so much it burned, and one day staring at that postcard of the totally generic tropical scene taped to your computer until you went completely insane. That gives you an idea of where I'm coming from.

As far as Athena, she sprang from Zeus' forehead fully formed and ready to kill everyone in the damn room, but she was a total daddy's girl, too. She also served a dual purpose in ancient times of being not only the goddess of battle but also the protector of civilized life and agrarian society, contradictions that are a little hard to reconcile (and thus interesting). My work tends to be concerned with this duality in the act of reigning in or bridling raw, feral creativity to make it work for you. But it's like a domesticated wolf: no matter how loyal it seems, deep down you know one day it's going to turn around and savage you.

C: What was your performance at Art Basel Miami? Did you receive a reaction different from what you might expect from a Chicago audience?

JC: I performed at the National Hotel, which has an amazing pool in the back. I wore a hollowed-out pumpkin on my head, which obscured sight and seriously muffled all sound. So I was totally blind and mostly deaf. I then mingled with the crowd for a bit, and they had to help me keep from falling over tables, chairs and such. Then I got in the pool with my clothes on and walked around (it was only five feet deep) so that the pumpkin appeared to be floating just on top of the water. It was night, and the lights in the pool caused an interesting refraction and made my body look about two feet tall, and the pumpkin look huge. The audience was initially confused, then enthusiastic, then both, which is generally a good sign.

C: You frequently collaborate with fellow artist Benjamin Bellas. How long has that relationship existed? How does your collaborative process work? How often do you collaborate?

JC: Benjamin Bellas and I have worked together frequently since grad school -- so, since about 2003. We generally create work around specific projects and proposals, so often the work we make together is site-specific. The last project we did involved rolling a big log covered in thousands of sequins down 14th St. in Manhattan. Collaborating is difficult, yet highly rewarding. There's often a tension that can lead to tears and threats of physical violence, and we try to channel that energy into our work. That's part of the reason the work we make together tends to be more aggressive than our individual practices. We like to use the classic straight man/funny man model and subvert it into something more disturbing than humorous.

C: What was your experience at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture like? How did it influence your art, to be away from your usual environment?

JC: It was a profound experience on many, many, many levels. This is going to come off as ironic, but I left there with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of what love is.

C: Your recent works repeat particular subjects: For examples, wheelbarrows, sharks, pumpkins, and things one would associate with the beach. Do these items have any sort of personal significance to you, or do just become fascinated with certain objects for a while -- maybe because of their shape, or the qualities people associate with them? Or is there another reason for repeating these objects?

JC: The pumpkin question comes up a lot. You know how some people have totem animals? I consider pumpkins to be my totem vegetable. It's as simple as that. A friend recently pointed out that pumpkins are actually fruits, and I became enraged. So, some objects have a deep significance to me that I can't fully verbalize, while others -- like the wheelbarrow, or folding chairs -- I simply find to be beautiful objects formally, though of course they do have representative power.

I had a dream once that a pink wheelbarrow was falling in a blue void, and I woke up questioning everything. I've been rather infatuated with them since. The act of repeating objects comes from me thinking of them as characters of sorts in an ongoing sit-com that is my art practice. Sitcoms are always putting the same characters in different scenarios that re-contextualize their personalities and reveal something new about them. I watched a lot of TV as a kid. The repetition can also make the objects become a language of sorts, letters making words making up larger sentences. In some ways I feel like I'm writing a screenplay. The performances I did at the THREAD show last year were all about this.

C: A recurring theme in your work is a squiggly/loopy line, rendered in various media: cord, hose, plastic leis, ink. Your THREAD installation is possibly the most ambitious example of this in your work to date. How much arrangement is involved in creating these lines/shapes? How do you know where the lines should go? Is it more spontaneous than planned?

JC: It's more spontaneous, definitely. The materials often dictate the direction of the work according to their physical properties. I've always had a strong connection to drawing, and so a lot of my work comes from trying to recreate drawings in space. The THREAD installation definitely came out of this process.

C: How does one procure a mile of garden hose? Do you just go to Home Depot, or are there wholesale hose dealers out there to fulfill such requests?

JC: The great crew at Gallery 400, where I did the installation, were excellent at coaxing several companies to donate most of the garden hose, so it worked out really well.