KEVIN COOLEY
Exploded Views
Exhibition Details
July 1 - September 18
Reception with the artist: Thursday, July 1st, 2021 6 -9 PM
Laney Contemporary Fine Art is pleased to present Exploded Views, a recent body of photography and video work, by Los Angeles-based artist Kevin Cooley. The exhibition will be on view at the gallery from July 1st through September 18th. On Thursday, July 1st there will be an artist talk and exhibition walkthrough with Kevin Cooley and Lisa Jaye Young, Ph.D., at 5pm. A reception will follow from 6 to 9pm.
Cooley captures shape-shifting elements as line, curve, and shadow by conducting controlled explosions in the desert under the guidance of a master pyrotechnicist. Working with varied chemical compositions, he creates different shapes, forms, colors, and movements. In this sense, each image depicts time and light exploding in the form of colorful and abstract spirals, clouds, tendrils, and rays, much like the fireworks we see on display this time of the year.
Inspired by wildfires, nebulae, jellyfish, the movement trails of distant stars, and smoke dynamics in the atmosphere, Cooley’s work explores the human fascination with natural formations and their shared visual properties. Paired with a desire to understand nature, the wonder of fire as abstraction is transformed into curiosity, sparking the viewer’s recognition that forms in nature are fully entangled and echo one another. As each image seemingly unfolds in front of the eyes, our perception is disrupted: are we witnessing a microcosmic entity or an event in macrocosmic space?
The exhibition includes three videos in the gallery’s upstairs, mirrored room. Using a high-speed Phantom video camera, Cooley transforms each momentary explosion into minutes-long spectacles which replicate endlessly across the mirrored walls. Time, light, space, materiality, and immateriality; all merge in mesmerizing color and abstraction. Each composition seems to slowly unfold in front of the eyes, collapsing stillness and motion in a singular frame, a compelling tension in Cooley’s work.
The vast desert expanse becomes a partner in enacting heat and light in the hot, arid landscape. This exhibition, in contrast, exhibited in Savannah’s steamy, Low Country summer, reminds us of the power that heat and light have, not only over our lives but also over our culture. The Fourth of July makes visible in lights and patterns our delicate and evolving relationship to liberty. It reminds us of just how steeped in American symbolic identity the explosive form continues to be, reflecting our own fears and fascinations.
