‘Ron Cooper: In a New Light’
LOUIS STERN FINE ARTS in Los Angeles is currently showing Taos resident, Ron Cooper: In a New Light. Cooper’s early Light Trap works are on display alongside his newest explorations – his Corona Bar series, created, as their titles suggest, in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. This exhibition surveys the artist’s inventive use of unconventional materials throughout his career, deployed in novel ways that defy expectation, to investigate the interplay of light, surface and perspective.
As a member of the Southern California Light and Space Movement, Cooper was a pioneer in the development of techniques and use of materials designed to capture, manipulate and alter the viewer’s perception of light. His early Light Trap works are formed from many layers of polyester resin and fiberglass, sprayed onto and later released from a waxed glass mold. Light pouring into these constructions is made substantial by the refraction between the layers, transforming the captured light into both medium and canvas. This process of creating these works is, in the words of the artist, “the
closest thing to painting on air.”
Cooper’s Corona Bars revisit his earlier Vertical Bar series and are the product of a long stretch of uninterrupted time during lockdown, which offered the artist an opportunity to experiment with new materials and surface finishes.
The first Vertical Bars were made in 1965 and executed with natural lacquer and pigments derived from pearly Swedish fish scales; the Corona Bar works on display play with the spectrum of synthetic pigments on the market today. Suspended in a transparent acrylic medium, the pigments are sprayed in layers onto the faces of slim rectangular boxes made of transparent plexiglass. Light slices cleanly through the plexiglass and splinters in all directions when it meets the layers of suspended particles, creating riots of opalescent color that morph, blend, disappear and reappear as the viewer moves around the work.
As the day advances and the light changes, the opacity of the Corona Bars waxes and wanes: crystalline in the morning, diaphanous in the afternoon, sharp and solidified in the evening. Cooper has added an additional dimension by encouraging a variety of textures to form on the surfaces. Whether softly gritted, bubbly or pebbled like raindrops on dry soil, these surfaces also transform as the viewer’s shifting perspective causes light to pool, reflect or glide straight through the shallow ridges and dips. Never the same day-to-day or even instant-toinstant, each work contains infinite singular experiences, a continuum of kaleidoscopic moments in space and time.
Besides his art practice, Cooper is known for popularizing craft mezcal in the United States through his highly successful brand, Del Maguey. Cooper lives and works in Ranchos de Taos, and Oaxaca, Mexico.
Tempo reached out to Cooper who as usual, was in transit from one place to another – cars, planes and other forms of transportation were in play – light travel has not yet become part of the mercurial artist’s oeuvre!
Besides making art, how have you spent this time in Taos?
I have been keeping busy building hot rod cars and racing them, making art and still doing Del Maguey singlevillage Mezcal. For the last year I have been doing webinars for Del Maguey and weeding a gigantic hillside, watching the native grasses and flowers reestablish themselves. We have built a great addition and restored our old adobe in Taos.