Kevin Cooley & Phillip Andrew Lewis: Unexplored Territory

Bringing together photographs, photograms, videos, and works on paper, Unexplored Territory is a collection of varied and interconnected work from Kevin Cooley and Phillip Andrew Lewis. Opening at Kopeikin Gallery on 11 January and running until 22 February, the exhibition seeks to understand how everything has the potential to be simultaneously beautiful and destructive. Utilising the power of representation and metaphorical analogies, both of the artists offer audiences a unique view into their artistic spaces without repeating subject matter.

For the exhibition Cooley unites a variety of his works including Anza Borrego, NROL-65 Spy Satellite Launch, Starlight Trajectory, Controlled Burns and Smoke Bolides. Anza Borrego is a large format landscape photograph outlining Mexican explorer Juan Bautista de Anza’s journey through the Southern California desert which now bears his name, while NROL-65 Spy Satellite Launch is a photographic quadriptych of a recent launch of a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. His work with photogram is evidenced in Starlight Trajectory, a piece resembling a comet or explosion in interstellar space.

In addition to Cooley’s work Andrew Lewis presents We Can Break Through, North of North Stars and The Silent Chorus. In We Can Break Through, the artist displays a pair of standard box fans connected to a single common power strip that morph from inert mechanical objects to active entities that ultimately bring about their own demise. The two channel video, The Silent Chorus, is screened on small vintage televisions where two piles of black and white dust rapidly succumb to erosion by gusts of wind, suggesting ideas of purity and perfection as they mix to form a cloud.

Kevin Cooley & Phillip Andrew Lewis: Unexplored Territory, 11 January – 22 February, Kopeikin Gallery, 2766 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA. 90034.

Credits
1. NROL-65 Spy Satellite Launch, Kevin Cooley.