Darin Cooper

To enter the realm of visual art, to step up to the surface and contents of an artwork, is to step through and into the galaxy of a culture on the whole. Darin Cooper’s activity as an artist reflects a profound and resplendent understanding of this fact—genetically, generatively connected to the languages and movements of the moving image, music, sport, food, design, and onward. Herein Cooper opens up painting as a process of both image- and object-making; a creative practice suffused with personal freedom and style, sound, and spiritual release.

Born in Newport News, Virginia, Cooper’s work is heavily influenced by Black Southern Culture in specific, where the Church, rap music, family, and the legacies of American slavery are ubiquitous. Working primarily in acrylics, Cooper produces rich signatures of color while using rubbing alcohol to disintegrate parts of the original pigment, creating a circuit of layered jewel tones (what he refers to as a “glaze”). Often this surface is accompanied by a silkscreened image and collaged inkjet prints, which become integrated into the broader wash that continues to accrue around them. Through these gestures Cooper’s work actively contemplates lineage and memory, as well as its erasure, mourning, and celebration. Ain't no place like home marks the artist's first solo exhibition.

Darin Cooper (b. 2000) holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York and has exhibited at venues including Bode Projects, Grove Collective, Seville Gallery, and Andrea Festa Fine Art. He was recently a resident artist at The Macedonia Institute.

Allen & Eldridge is located downstairs at James Fuentes gallery, presenting atmospheric introductory exhibitions and collaborations. Following its first generation of programming from 2015-2017, the space relaunched in the summer of 2022 with a series of solo and group projects programmed by the gallery and invited curators, led by Laura Brown.