Alika Cooper & Eric Wesley

“​Wabi-Sabi​ is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty. It occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection.” [1]​ ​As such ​Wabi Sabi​ is not just a way of characterizing the transcendent ingenious integrity of that which is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, but rather a complete fundamental cognitive orientation.

If ​Wabi​ is interpreted as imperfection due to the inevitable limitations of design and manufacture and ​Sabi​ as the what-happens-next (encompassing all aspects of chance and mortality), could there then be a more wonderfully complete way to describe the way two people in a relationship come together to make something else?

This exhibition includes works from each artist’s individual practices, disparate but inevitably influenced by one another. The works are situated in a ‘lobby-space,’ a built environment created collaboratively by Cooper and Wesley as a template for viewing.

“Space is always coded, racialized, gendered, but in the hotel lobby everyone, so long as they are a paying customer, is treated the same. The rules are made clear, you follow the signs. It is democratizing to erase your identity and forfeit your community in the space.” [2]​ It is a curious type of space for a couple to reference, a privately owned presentation of ‘public.’

A Venn diagram of ‘art gallery’ and ‘lobby’ would be a funny one.

Alika Cooper​ was born in Guam in 1979. Cooper received both her MFA and BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Solo and two-person exhibitions include Madeline Cake Situations, New York; Buoy, Odd Ark LA, Los Angeles, Wet Suits Good Weather Gallery, Little Rock; Have A Sex Fort Gondo, Saint Louis; The Disguised Edge Mulherin, Toronto; Upbraid Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and Glass Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco. Cooper was the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant, the MagicTrillium Press Yesland Prize, and the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fellowship. She has participated in The Viewing Program at The Drawing Center, New York; Motion Picture at The Saint Louis Art Museum. Alica Cooper was Artist in Residence at Galleria Studio Legale in Marzano Appio, Italy and at Marble House Project, Dorset, Vermont.

Eric Wesley​ was born in Los Angeles, California in 1973, where he continues to live and work. Wesley has held solo exhibitions in galleries internationally as well as at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples, Itay. He has participated in group shows at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Fundación/Colección, Jumex, Mexico; Museo d’Arte, Benevento, Italy; The Prague Biennial in 2007; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; P.S.1, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Eric Wesley is also the co-founder of Mountain School of Art (MSA), Los Angeles, CA.

Wabi Sabi Lobby i​ s the second iteration of a two-person show first initiated by Bobbi Woods/Private Places/PDX.

1​- Leonard Koren founded ​Wet Magazine​ in 1976, a periodical dedicated to gourmet bathing. The magazine was influential in the development of postmodern aesthetics in LA. Koren then moved to Japan and continued to write and publish on Aesthetics and Japanese culture.

2 - ​Matthew Cooper is a Ph.D. (candidate) in early nineteenth-century German literature and thought. His research is based primarily in German Idealism and Political Theology as a means to bring coherence to current political situations and theoretical discourse.