Brian Cooper
cooperkazan@gmail.com
Exhibition Record:
2026
"Eral Requiem- Nothing Stops This Train", Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles, CA2023
“No Time Like the Present”, Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA
“Things Thinking”, Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
Nomad 2, Torrance, CA
$400 Show, Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
2021
“Funhouse: A Celebration of Los Angeles Painting”, Rory Devine Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA
2019
“Does and Donaughts” curated by Christina Leung, White Columns, New York, NY
“Dream House v.s. Punk House”, Serious Topics, Los Angeles, CA
“Group Show”', LAVA Projects guest curation, Berlin, DE
“Artist Book Show” Big Pictures Los Angeles guest curation, Berlin, DE
“Artist Book Show” Big Pictures Los Angeles , Los Angeles, CA
“Kamikaze show” curated by Barry Markowitz, Post @MiM gallery, Los Angeles, CA
“A Store Show”, Odd Ark LA, Los Angeles, CA
“Final Show”, Big Pictures Los Angeles , Los Angeles, CA
2018
“Tiny Men on Tits and Friends”, Chimento Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA
“Fresh Start”, Lava Projects, Los Angeles, CA
L.A. Zine and Art Book Bazaar, Museum as Retail Space, Los Angeles, CA
Independent Art Book Fair, Los Angeles, CA
8 Ball Zine Fair (LA Pages Fair), Los Angeles, CA
“Edge of Today”, Launch LA, Los Angeles, CA
“Divided Brain”, Lava projects, Los Angeles, CA
“Brian Cooper and Tim Rogers” SB Valley College, San Bernardino, CA
2017
The Hut at Cape Royds, Startup Art Fair, Hollywood
“Far Bazaar”, Cerritos College, Los Angeles, CA
Faculty Show, LACHSA, Los Angeles, CA
Faculty Show, SBVC, San Bernardino, CA
2016
The Hut at Cape Royds, Satellite Art Show 2016, Miami Basel
Scope Miami, BG Gallery, Miami, FL
“Sleepless: The Music Center After Hours at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion”, Los Angeles, CA
How High, Left Field Gallery curated by Ryan Travis Christian, San Luis Obispo, CA
Consort, Artshare LA, Los Angeles, CA
La Estacion Arte Contemporaneo, Chihuahua Me
LABo por Venezuela, Carlos Blanco Studio, Bogota, Columbia
2015
Forgetting The Future- Entropy in the Reflective Age, Torrance Museum of Art, Torrance, CA
Head Space, 2 person show with Tanya Batura, Jaus Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Ducks L.A., Curated by Ryan Travis Christian, Minotaur Projects Space, Los Angeles, CA
6H to 8B Artists who draw in Los Angeles, Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Hysterical Friction: Works on Paper from JAUS LA, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY
2014
Dirty Minds: Life on Earth, curated by Thomas Kidd, BG Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
i:23 Yokahama Triennale, curated by Kio Griffith, Tokyo and Yokahama, Japan
Ducks, curated by Ryan Travis Christian, Greenpoint Terminal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2013
Archaic Revival,curated by Dani Tull, Zic Zerp gallery, Rotterdam, NL
Print Room, the Archaic Revival Review, Rotterdam, NL
Art Bands Showcase, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
2012
Fuel for the Fire, Temporary Space and Human Resources LA, Curated by Dawn Kasper,
New York, NY
Holodeck, Post Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Against The Grain Charity Auction, Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Faculty Show, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Faculty Show, Clara and Allen Gresham Gallery, San Bernardino, CA
2011
Urban Construction, Art Gate Gallery, New York, NY
Nothing to Say, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Incognito, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA
T-shirt revival night, Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Breaking New Ground, Outpost for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
Cities: Visionary Places, curated by Camilla Boemio, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
2010
Show 2, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Incognito, Santa MonicaMuseum of Art, Santa Monica, CA
Woodie, the Attic, Art Los Angeles Contemporary Art Fair
Depthless, Stadler and Waldorf, Los Angeles, CA
2009
Friends of Sky, Circus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
West Prize Exhibition, The West Collection, Oaks, PA
Next Art Fair, The West Collection, Chicago, IL
Lovable Like Orphaned Kitties and Bastard Children, Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
Back Yard, Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
On the Down-Low, The Attic, Los Angeles, CA
Invite, Circus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008
Cosmos Factory, curated by Brad Eberhardt, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Affordable Art Fair, NY, NY, Sam Lee Gallery
Some Paintings, L.A. Weekly Biennial, Track16 Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2007
Intersection, sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
2006
Dynasty, Gallery MC, New York, NY
Concrete, Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, Los Angeles, CA
Stars on Vine, Aiden Riley Taylor Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2005
New Work, San Bernardino Valley College Art Gallery, San Bernardino, CA
Quickening, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ
2004
Project room, Sweeney Art Museum at UC Riverside, Riverside, CA
High Anxiety, Gallery C, Los Angeles, CA
LA Raid, de Parrel, Amsterdam, NLD
Southwestnet: Phx/LA, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Phoenix, AZ
2003
Meltdown, Acuña Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Unnatural, Raid Projects, Los Angeles, CA
Halloween Show, Practice Space, Los Angeles, CA
2002
Comfort Control, Raid Projects, Los Angeles, CA
Selected Collections:
The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, Los Angeles, CA
The West Collection, Oaks, PA
The Marriott Hotels Collection, Los Angeles, CA
The Brian Brater Collection, Palm Springs, CA
Awards/ Honors:
2009 West Prize Acquisition Finalist
2000- 2002 USC Graduate Teaching Assistantship Award
Press and Publications:
Electronic Sound Magazine, December 2024
Artillery Magazine, September 2023
Hi Fructose, January 2023
Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Nov. 2021
KCRW, Nov. 2021
Hi-Fructose, Sept. 2021
Hi-Fructose, March 2021
Hi-Fructose, May 2020
Art and Cake, June 10th, 2019
Art and Cake, December 1st, 2018
Art and Cake, January 27th, 2018
Daily Serving, Fan mail: Brian Cooper, March 2017
Be-Art Magazine, March 2015
Fabrik Magazine, April 2015
Hi-Fructose, July 2014
Sick Of The Radio.com, Studio Visit: Brian Cooper, Feb. 20th, 2013,
Beautiful Decay, November 6, 2012,
Juxtapoz.com, Jan. 3rd, 2011, preview of nothing to say at Guerrero Gallery,
Booooooom.com, Jan. 14th, 2010, Jeff Hamada,
Beautiful Decay, “Book 3”, Spring 2010,
Sycamore Review, issue 22.1, Spring 2010,
Rojo Magazine, ®kyoi, breach dynamics, Sept. 2009,
Beautiful Decay, May 19th, 2009 Fei Liu,
Drawn.ca, June 4th, 2009,
Artillery Magazine, Nov./Dec. 2008, vol. 3 issue 2, Cosmos Factory, Carrie Patterson,
Artweek, Dec. 08/Jan. 09, vol.39, issue 10, Cosmos Factory, Mathew Timmons,
Cantanker, Excess, Issue 5, “Enhanced Interrogation of Brian Cooper” Sp. 2008,
L.A. Weekly, Jan.11th-17th 2008, Some Paintings, Track 16 Gallery,
New American Paintings No.73, Dec. 2007, The Open studios press,
Press Enterprise, Feb.28th, 2005, New Work, SB Valley College Art Gallery,
San Bernardino Sun, Feb. 21st, 2005, New Work, SB Valley College Art Gallery
UC Riverside Highlander, April, 2004, Project Room at Sweeney Gallery
Robotsinlove.blogspot.com, December 09, 2004, American Gothic
Arizona Republic, 5/16, 2004, PHX/LA at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Arizona
Sentinel Let’s Go! June 2004, PHX/LA at Scottsdale Museum of Contemp. Art
Scottsdale Republic, 4/28 2004, PHX/LA at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Java Magazine, May 2004, SouthwestNET: PHX/LA
ArtScene, May, 2003, Meltdown at Acuña Hansen, Los Angeles, CA
Artweek, April 2003, Unnatural at Raid Projects, Los Angeles, CA
Gallery Education:
1999-2002 Gallery Director at Wayward Gallery, West Hollywood, CA
2018 curator for “Divided Brain” at LAVA Projects, Los Angeles, CA
Education:
MFA 2002 Studio Art University of Southern California
BFA 1995 Studio Art San Francisco Art Institute
Bio
Brian Cooper currently paints modular synthesizers with the gravity traditionally given to sacred subjects. His work brings together California psychedelia, experimental music, surrealist humor, and a fascination with the luminous intensity of early Netherlandish painting. Electronic equipment is transformed into something imposing, improbable, and strangely alive. There is affection in this transformation, but also humor. The machines can feel majestic and slightly goofy at the same time.
Some synthesizers appear on curtains while others bend and curve into the viewer’s space. Meticulous illusion and physical distortion blur the boundary between painted image and actual object. Rich color, dramatic light, and exacting craft give these theatrical forms an unusual presence in which seriousness and absurdity coexist.
The paintings hold Cooper’s love of machines in tension with his concern about how they teach us to see. Machines can encourage us to treat experience as information, something to classify, process, and control. Yet the modular synthesizer uses precise systems to produce unpredictable experiences of sound. Cooper is drawn to this contradiction. His paintings use machines associated with control to create encounters that are uncertain, intimate, humorous, and difficult to reduce to information alone.
These concerns extend through a practice beginning in 1994. Early paintings and sculptures brought fleshy torsos into dialogue with plush upholstery, using humor to explore longings of comfort and appetite. Later paintings of imagined monumental sculptures and wooden constructions became metaphors for the way ideas, beliefs, and systems of meaning are constructed rather than simply discovered. Drawings informed by science and philosophy often began with conceptual or propositional ideas, then translated them through intuition and improvisation into unexpected forms and associations. Other paintings playfully imagined empty space as something physical. Cushionlike forms and distorted grids became metaphors for a universe in which space can stretch, bend, and deform. Paintings of battered and curling phone books transformed orderly systems of information into unruly physical objects. In works depicting stretched and intertwined abstract bodies, gestures hover between wrestling and embrace, suggesting forms of relationship that resist a fixed description.
Across these bodies of work, Cooper repeatedly turns abstract systems into physical things. Ideas become constructions. Space becomes something soft and elastic. Information becomes an object that can buckle and collapse. Machines become theatrical presences capable of tenderness and absurdity. Familiar things begin to resist the categories that ordinarily make them useful and easy to understand. Illusion, humor, and physical invention are central to this process. Cooper’s work returns to the possibility that sustained attention can change the character of what we think we already know, allowing ordinary things to become strange, consequential, and alive.
Born in San Francisco, Cooper is deeply shaped by California’s traditions of psychedelia, experimental music, and surrealist humor. He is equally drawn to the ethereal luminosity and devotional intensity of Northern Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck. Beyond his visual art, Cooper creates music under the name Earth Like Planets, producing improvisational loop based compositions informed by psychology and philosophy.
Cooper’s work has been featured in Le Monde, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Booooooom, L.A. Weekly, Electronic Sound, and New American Paintings, among others. His work is included in collections such as the West Collection, the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, the Marriott Hotels Collection, The Cerritos College Museum Collection, and the collection of music producer Brian Brater.
He has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including White Columns, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Praz-Delavallade, with exhibitions spanning Berlin, Japan, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Colombia. Cooper received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the University of Southern California, where he worked and studied with artists including Ken Price, Robert Williams, and Jim Shaw