Join us on Saturday, November 13, from 6-9pm at CO-OPt Research + Projects for a closing celebration and socially distanced performance for the exhibition Under Pressure. At 7:30pm there will be a performance by Andrew Weathers and Seth Warren-Crow, playing improvised scores to projected silent films by artist Justin Clifford Rhody in the garage space. Masks required.
Follow us on Instagram where we will be on Instagram Live at around 7:30pm Central, on November 13
Under Pressure, installation view, CO-OPt Research + Projects, Lubbock, Texas, September 2021.
Under Pressure (Iteration 3)
Under Pressure
March 8 - November 13, 2021
Closing party November 13, 6pm-9pm
At CO-OPt Research + Projects, we have extended the exhibition of Under Pressure, an experimental juried exhibition, until November. Over the past few months, the show has continued to slowly develop and change, but we are pleased to announce the final iteration is now on view. From this point forward, works may disappear, but no further works will be added.
New works in this last arrangement include: a found-footage video by Santa Fe-based artist Justin Clifford Rhody, two video performances by Palo Alto-based artist Kellie Bornhoft, a digital video by Oakland-based artist Liam Ze’ev O’Connor, two photographs by Atlanta-based photographer Hannah Elijah, and a video and installation by Dallas-based artist Kerry Butcher. The radio program on KOOPT 89.9 FM is now broadcasting a live feed of the interior of the gallery, with sound from the videos by Kellie Bornhoft, Justin Clifford Rhody (with soundtrack by Carlos Gonzalez), and Kerry Butcher audible.
Liam Ze’ev O’Connor’s video Makhtesh (Open, Closed, Open) centers on a fluid, morphing image of a geological material--Jerusalem stone--as a container for history, identity, colonialism, and trauma. In the center of the gallery, Kerry Butcher has placed a shattered stone (Untitled) atop a mound of soil and wood ash, as a kind of footstone or grave marker, and on the wall above, her video Present (Absence) plays, depicting found aerial footage of a burial at sea, with the sound of a ticking clock, as “a study of the inaccessible spaces for grieving and the in-flux nature of closure during this time.”
Complementing the blue of the ocean in Butcher’s video, Kellie Bornhoft’s video Sun Breathing emits a decidedly orange glow, depicting the sun on “the infamous day the Bay Area turned tangerine,” filmed while the artist attempted to breathe in the smoky, wildfire choked air, the image of the sun shuddering with each cough. Bornhoft’s other video, Boundless Sediments, is on view on a monitor in the gallery window, a diptych of poetry, ephemeral performance and hand drawn animation that explores our relationship with the earth in the anthropocene.
Alternating on the same monitor is Justin Clifford Rhody’s haunting video Move Outs, which was created from found VHS footage of a landlord’s documentation of property inspections--in nondescript, empty apartment interiors, hands search for hidden dust and the camera focuses on minor flaws, triggering a sense of anxiety, precarity, and malaise. Likewise, Hannah Elijah’s photographs--of a banal bathroom interior, the mirror fogged up with steam, and a discarded plastic bag leaking a mysterious blue liquid--communicate a sense of interiority and obfuscation, waste and loss, and "invisibility and inadequacy." These new works join Adán De La Garza's video Protest Etiquette and Noah Travis Phillips' digital print Under Pressure (One Piece), which remain in the space from the previous iteration of the exhibition.
Under Pressure aims to create dialogue between artists and art works about the myriad pressures of the contemporary moment: the pressures we exert as well as the pressures placed upon us. The initial installation of Under Pressure featured a multi-object installation and sound work by Dallas-based artist Trey Burns and a large-scale photograph by Atlanta-based photographer and artist Zachary Francois. The show evolved to include a hanging hooked-rug tapestry by Massachusetts-based artist Jackie Fischer, a sculpture of appropriated and crafted mementos dangling from a rearview mirror by Santa Barbara-based artist Alex Lukas, a video performance by Denver-based artist Adán De La Garza (still on view), a cluster of six images contributed by Boulder-based artist Noah Travis Phillips (still on view), a website by Brooklyn-based artist Aaron Mulligan, and sound works broadcast on 89.9 FM KOOPT by Jacob Bissell (San Antonio) of domestic field recordings and improvisations, Michael Curtis Asbill (Arlington) of a recording of fracking in progress, and Leah Sandler (Orlando) of a satirical commercial for the fictional "Center for Post-Capitalist History."
All included works will be featured on our website and social media, which will be updated continually as the gallery changes over time. At the culmination of the exhibition, a catalogue will be published.
Because of the continuing threat of the spread of COVID-19, the exhibition is designed for viewing from outside the gallery only. Audio elements of the exhibition can be listened to by tuning a radio to KOOPT 89.9, a low-powered FM radio station, while in the vicinity of the gallery. Optimal viewing time for the show is between 6pm and 10pm daily.
Incoming artists:
Liam Ze’ev O’Connor is an artist and educator based in Oakland, CA. Liam received a BA in Sculpture from Lewis & Clark College and a MFA in Sculpture + Expanded Practice from The Ohio State University. Through sculpture, video, and photo-based installation, Liam’s work explores architecture and the complexity of Jewish identity in America.
Kerry Butcher is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Dallas, Texas. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Arlington (2012) and is currently the Gallery Manager for the Center for Creative Connections at the Dallas Museum of Art.
Kellie Bornhoft’s (she/her) practice seeks tangible and poetic narratives needed in an ever-warming climate. Bornhoft utilizes sculpture, installation and video to delve into the whelms and quotidian experiences of our precarious times. Scientific data and news headlines do plenty to evince the state of our warming planet, but the abject realities of such facts are hard to possess. Through geological and more-than-human lenses, Bornhoft sifts through shallow dichotomies (such as natural/unnatural, here/there, or animate/inanimate.) Bornhoft is currently working in the Bay Area of California. She holds a MFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from Ohio State University and a BFA from Watkins College of Art and Design. Bornhoft’s work has exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and film festivals such as the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kulturanker in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Athens International Film and Video Festival. Bornhoft’s work has been reviewed in many publications including Frieze Magazine, Burnaway, INDYweek and ArtsATL.
Justin Clifford Rhody is a photographer, filmmaker & sound artist currently living in New Mexico. He operates the Physical media label & organizes the No Name Cinema film series. More info at www.justincliffordrhody.com
Hannah Elijah is a photographer based in Atlanta, GA. She received a B.A. in Journalism with a minor in Art from Georgia State University. Her work centralizes themes of abstraction, solitude, and subtle intimacies in an attempt to preserve the ephemeral.
Under Pressure, installation view, CO-OPt Research + Projects, Lubbock, Texas, September 2021.
Liam Ze’ev O’Connor, Still from Makhtesh (Open, Closed, Open), 2021, SD video silent, 2:47 min. loop
Under Pressure, installation view, CO-OPt Research + Projects, Lubbock, Texas, September 2021.
Kerry Butcher, Still from Present (Absence), 2021, video*, 8:59 minutes
Kellie Bornhoft, Still from Sun Breathing, 2020, Looping 2:00
Under Pressure, installation view, CO-OPt Research + Projects, Lubbock, Texas, September 2021.
Kellie Bornhoft, Still from Boundless Sediments 2020. 2-channel video installation.
Justin Clifford Rhody, Still from Move Outs, 2020, VHS / Color / Sound, 18 mins.
Hannah Elijah, Untitled, 2019
Hannah Elijah, Self-Portrait, 2019.
Under Pressure, installation view, CO-OPt Research + Projects, Lubbock, Texas, September 2021.
Under Pressure (Iteration 2)
Jacqueline Fischer, Sorry We’re Open, 2020
Under Pressure
March 8 - July 31, 2021
Submissions accepted until July
Open Parking Lot: May 14, 6pm-9pm
Under Pressure, an experimental juried exhibition, continues to evolve at CO-OPt Research + Projects. New works now on view include a sculpture by Santa Barbara-based artist Alex Lukas, a collection of images by Boulder-based interdisciplinary artist Noah Travis Phillips, a fiber sign by Massachusetts-based artist Jackie Fischer, and a video by Denver-based interdisciplinary artist Adán De La Garza. The radio program on KOOPT 89.9 FM is now broadcasting sound works by Orlando-based Leah Sandler, Arlington-based Michael Curtis Asbill, and San Antonio-based Jacob Bissell.
Jackie Fischer's Sorry, We’re OPEN reverses the ubiquitous sign found in many small businesses to point to the struggle of essential employees and the many flaws in our economic system revealed by the pandemic. In Adán De La Garza's video Protest Etiquette, the artist navigates a rocky terrain while balancing a burning Molotov cocktail on his head--a response to the “centrist” cry for civility in the midst of protests against social injustice. Alex Lukas' sculpture of appropriated and crafted mementos dangles from an isolated rearview mirror, in morbid black monochrome, paired with now-quotidian masks and face-covering bandannas. Noah Travis Phillips' cluster of six images was drawn from their private media archive referencing various sorts of “pressures”--finding abstract interconnections between the geological, bodily, and linguistic.
New sound works being broadcast on 89.9 FM KOOPT include Jacob Bissell's An Incomplete Catalogue of Holding On, a series of domestic field recordings/improvisations on the sonic ecology of familial life altered by neurodegenerative disease and physical injury, and Michael Curtis Asbill's Anthroposonic, a recording of fracking in progress in Arlington, Texas, recorded in the short period after sound barriers had been removed while drilling was still active. These sound pieces are punctuated by Leah Sandler's "commercial" for the "Center for Post-Capitalist History," advertising a method for determining any individual's "time value coefficient."
Under Pressure aims to create dialogue between artists and art works about the myriad pressures of the contemporary moment: the pressures we exert as well as the pressures placed upon us. The initial installation of Under Pressure featured a multi-object installation and sound work by Dallas-based artist Trey Burns and a large-scale photograph by Atlanta-based photographer and artist Zachary Francois, both of which remain in the gallery, albeit in a different configuration.
Because of the continuing threat of the spread of COVID-19, the exhibition is designed for viewing from outside the gallery only. Audio elements of the exhibition can be listened to by tuning a radio to KOOPT 89.9, a low-powered FM radio station, while in the vicinity of the gallery. Optimal viewing time for the video piece in the show is between 6pm and 10pm daily.
On Friday May 14, we will be holding a limited opening and socially distanced gathering in the parking lot outside of CO-OPt from 6pm to 9pm.
This exhibition will change and evolve throughout its run. As new submissions are received, art works will be added, moved, or removed from the gallery. Some works may stay in the space for longer than others. Each new work added to the exhibition will act as a reflection of one set of circumstances and the initiation of another.
Incoming Artists:
Originally from Tucson, Arizona Adán De La Garza holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has participated in exhibitions at the Deluge Contemporary Art (Victoria, Canada), AS220 (Providence, RI), The New School (New York, NY), The Future Gallery (Berlin, DE), The Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art (Tucson, AZ), Casa Maauad (Mexico City, Mexico), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and festivals such as The Paseo (Taos, NM), PAF Festival of Film Animation (Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic), Currents International New Media Festival (Santa Fe, NM), WNDX Festival of Moving Image (Winnipeg, Canada) and Denver Noise Fest in addition to The Biennial of the Americas (Denver, CO). Adán was a founding member of the Sound, Video and Performance Art collective The Flinching Eye (2011-2020), a co-conspirator of the media arts exhibition series Nothing To See Here (2013-2016), a participant at Collective Misnomer(2016 - present), and smashes a lot of buttons with Dizzy Spell(2018 - present). Adán is currently based in Denver, Colorado.
I am mesmerized by the alchemy of phase transformation. I’m constantly gathering new information and insight through material exploration and experimentation. This helps me understand my place among the micro and macro. I grew up in the suburbs of Long Island where I learned from a young age that if I wanted anything I had to work for it. I apply my mind and body to very vigorous materials that require hands-on, process-based activity. I need to be physically engulfed in this kind of labor to be granted any stem of satisfaction. From the molecular level of material behavior to the psychological level of human behavior, my work is a response to stimulating conditions. My personal, feminine and cultural story presents itself through formal, spatial, conceptual and material qualities in my sculpture and installation.
Noah Travis Phillips is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and educator; BA, Naropa University, Fine Art and Environmental Studies; MFA, University of Denver, Emergen Digital Practices. Their research ad creative interests integrate personal mythologies, the anthropocene and the posthuman, engaging appropriation and digital/analog remix strategies. They create adaptable and mulitcentered artworks incorporating 2D / 3D digital fabrication, videos, books, performance, and the internet. Phillips is Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor in Emergent Digital Practices and University of Denver. Their most recent exhibitions include group shows at Alto Gallery in Denver, CO (ARTIFACTS), Miriam Gallery in NYC (Friendly Ghost) and the Weserbury Museum of Modern Art ( Künstlerpublikationen: analog – digital!). They live and work in Boulder, Colorado.
MFA, 2017, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, BFA, 2014, Texas State University, San Marcos. Exhibitions: Oh, Maker, Heaven Gallery; Distances Measured from Home, Gallery KIN; Rise from the Rubble, Weather the Winds: Fundraiser/Auction, Chicago Artist Coalition; SAIC MFA Show 2017, Sullivan Galleries, Chicago; In the Portfolios, Flaxman Library Special Collections,Chicago; SofTactics, Cement Loop, Austin, Texas. Collections: The Art Institute of Chicago.
Alex Lukas was born in Boston and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of place, human activity, and history; seeking to aggrandize the everyday, question historical narratives, and archive the individual. His fieldwork, research, and production reframes the monumental and the incidental through intricate print publications, sculpture, drawing, painting, video, and audio collage. Lukas is an assistant professor of print and publication at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Lukas received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been exhibited widely including at Guerrero Gallery (San Francisco), Zevitas Marcus (Los Angeles), The Luminary (St. Louis), Miller ICA (Pittsburgh), UPFOR Gallery (Portland), and Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland), among many others. His work is included in the collections of the Kadist Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the MIT List Visual Arts Center’s Student Loan Art Collection, the New York Public Library, and the Library of the Museum of Modern Art. He has participated in residencies at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Fountainhead Residency, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Aaron Mulligan is a curator and artist from Colorado currently based in Brooklyn. His practice entails an investigation into the relationship between images and their viewers. He is particularly focused on exploring methods of appropriating images from consumer culture so as to develop tactics whereby consumers affect images and express cultural agency. Mulligan builds bridges between visual cultures outside those traditionally encompassed in the category of the fine arts, looking to explore the expressiveness of diverse visual products. His methods entail a subversion of notions of authorship and stylistic novelty and emphasize the incorporation of interdisciplinary praxis. Mulligan also advocates for the movement toward a post-work society, attempting to shift the value awarded to labor over to the process of education. He serves as an educator, following the approach of Joseph Albers and John Dewey. From April 2018- October 2019 Mulligan ran a gallery and educational space called Juicebox in Denver Colorado with his wife Lucía Rodríguez, devoted to providing a platform for underrepresented artists and for community.
Jacob Bissell (b. 1997) is from San Antonio, Texas. Jacob works with sound as a composer, performer, interpreter and avid listener. His work is concerned with blurring the lines between art, music, and therapeutic practices, providing an empathetic lens for which to view intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. Currently, Jacob serves as a music therapist in the greater San Antonio community.
Leah Sandler is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Orlando, Florida. Her work explores knowledge production and the end of capitalism through conceptual practices, sound, video, and text. By taking on multiple voices through para-fictional world-building in an attempt to piece together and constantly rework an ideological framework of her own artistic production, Sandler navigates through her work a false sense of ideological omnipotence experienced by a late capitalist subject.
Under Pressure (Iteration 2) Installation view
Jacqueline Fischer, Sorry We’re Open, 2020
Under Pressure (Iteration 2) Installation view
Adán De La Garza, Protest Etiquette (installation view), 2020
Alex Lukas, (Untitled), 2021. Replacement rearview mirror for a 2007 Ford Ranger, air freshener, plastic beads, plastic lei, graduation tassels, paisley bandana, paisley face mask, disposable face mask, fuzzy dice, spray paint, ceramic tree-stump shaped tombstone. 10" x 13" x 28"
Alex Lukas, (Untitled), 2021. Replacement rearview mirror for a 2007 Ford Ranger, air freshener, plastic beads, plastic lei, graduation tassels, paisley bandana, paisley face mask, disposable face mask, fuzzy dice, spray paint, ceramic tree-stump shaped tombstone. 10" x 13" x 28"
Noah Travis Phillips, Cluster of six images on the theme of “under pressure” from my private media archive using the title as keywords and composing fruitful couplings. References are made to: the pressure(s) of the body/ies, and pressures of appearance(s) intensity of “and, and, and”/& and interconnections(s) Unknown Pleasures cover origin, first recognized pulsar, and potential extraterrestrial life, and … pressure is depicted in documentation of an artwork titled In the Spirit of Defiance of Larger Power(s) from 2012, made from a (Denver clay) brick / atop three (organic, fresh, chicken) eggs /atop a (square-foot) mirror and geological pressures.
98.9 KOOPT features
Michael Curtis Asbill, Anthroposonic, 2019. audio loop
Fracking, Lake Arlington Baptist Church, Arlington, TX. Recorded in the short period after sound barriers had been removed while drilling was still active.
Jacob Bissell, An Incomplete Catalogue of Holding On, 2020. audio
An Incomplete Catalogue of Holding On, is a series of domestic field recordings/improvisations concerned with the sonic ecology of familial life altered by neurodegenerative disease and physical injury, as well as the process of anticipatory grief and the futile efforts of capturing what will no longer be. Medical fragility necessitates a level of sterility that stands in direct contrast to the associations of a loved ones home. As such, the sounds of daily life gradually change in correspondence to the needs of each individual in the home. An Incomplete Catalogue of Holding On constructs several performances with unique sound material in the home of the artist’s grandmother. A chair, piano, hospital bed, power wheelchair, television set, and other objects are privileged, introducing listeners to the intimate, albeit jejune acoustic environment that saturates day-to-day life. The artist performs with these objects as a way of preserving his place within the echoes; not only of the home or his grandmother, but of the warmth felt within it. Ultimately, the process shows the often fruitless-yet-necessary nature of humans attempting to preserve memories as they grapple with mortality. There are a multitude of pressures that An Incomplete Catalogue of Holding On attempts to convey by centering objects inflicted by human intervention. The recordings indicate a push-and-pull narrative between human and object that can also be applied to other relationships within the home, as well as each individual’s pursuit of inner-balance.
Leah Sandler, Time Value, 2021
Online Features
Aaron, Mulligan, For One of My Ghosts, https://for-one-of-my-ghosts.glitch.me/
Aaron Mulligan: “I was born a year after the Berlin Wall fell, which was an event interpreted by many to represent the end of the Cold War. In a sense, I never lived in the world of the Cold War. Having grown up in an era of almost complete US hegemony was like growing up in a historical vacuum. It was the "end of history" according to Francis Fukuyama. So here we are living after both God's and History's death, and it seems like we're actually being haunted by the Cold War. We're being haunted by the ghost of those ideas that were supposed to have disappeared along with the wall.
This website was designed by researching images of bits of debris advertised online as pieces of the Berlin wall. Whether or not they are actual pieces of the Berlin Wall is a matter of trust. We live in a post-truth era, after all. What remains interesting is the irony of selling pieces of the Berlin Wall on platforms like Amazon. I want to buy one. They look like little minerals, formed not by geological but social processes. Perhaps I am only speaking for myself, but I feel the attractiveness of these objects is that they are "pieces of history" that one can "own". We can now purchase the shattered pieces of History's body and get them shipped directly to our individual homes around the world. Like little seeds being blown in the wind, or like the chopped up parts of Osiris's body.”
Under Pressure (Iteration 1)
March 8 - July 31, 2021
Submissions accepted until July
The initial installation of Under Pressure, an experimental juried exhibition, is now visible through the gallery windows of CO-OPt Research + Projects. Under Pressure aims to create dialogue between artists and art works about the myriad pressures of the contemporary moment: the pressures we exert as well as the pressures placed upon us. The initial installation of Under Pressure features a multi-object installation and sound work by Dallas-based artist Trey Burns and a large-scale photograph by Atlanta-based photographer and artist Zachary Francois. Francois’ photograph, All Wrapped Up, shows an embrace of closeness between two friends wearing green, indicating harmony and tranquility. Burns installation is a tangle of media that evokes dissociations between natural and media landscapes. Together they fill the gallery with contradictions that define the moment-- hope and anxiety, closeness and distance, the material and the virtual.
This exhibition will be structured differently than most in that it will be changing and evolving throughout its run. As new submissions are received, art works will be added, moved, or removed from the gallery. Some works may stay in the space for longer than others. Each new work added to the exhibition will act as a reflection of one set of circumstances and the initiation of another. Because of the continuing threat of the spread of COVID-19, the exhibition is designed for viewing from outside the gallery only and there will be no opening reception. Audio elements of the exhibition can be listened to by tuning a radio to KOOPT 89.9, a low-powered FM radio station, while in the vicinity of the gallery.
About the artists:
Zachary Francois (born in Naperville Illinois, 1999) Is a photographer and artist based in Atlanta. Using photography as a form of self-actualization and critical thinking, as a means to explore topics of existence and how we consume and produce images and the effects they have within our culture.
Trey Burns (b. 1984 USA) grew up in Georgia, where he attended the Savannah College of Art & Design and received an MFA in 2008. In 2018, he founded Sweet Pass Sculpture Park with his partner, Tamara Johnson, an outdoor exhibition space dedicated to experimentation, community engagement, and creating systems that exist in the gaps between ideas of gardens, green spaces, and public spaces while supporting contemporary sculpture and new media. Primarily a lens-based artist, he also works as a curator, educator, multimedia producer, and serial collaborator. His work has been shown at the Ecole Nationale d’Architecture Paris, Malaquais Gallery (Paris, France) Pavillion Vendôme (Clichy-la-Garenne, France), the St. Paul’s Cultural Center (Chicago, IL), Wassaic Projects (Wassaic, NY), Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), ex ovo (Dallas, TX), and solo exhibitions at The May Gallery (New Orleans, LA), The Hand (Queens, NY) and et al Projects (Brooklyn, NY). In 2020, he was awarded a grant from the City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture, and an NEA Grant with Wassaic Projects. Currently, he teaches Creative Computation at Southern Methodist University.
COOPt Research & Projects, 4202 Boston Ave. Lubbock, TX
Under Pressure (iteration 1), installation view, 2021
Zachary Francois, All Wrapped Up, mixed media, 2020
Trey Burns, TV Portrait (Lily) & TV Portrait (Patrick) & Interference Study 36, mixed media, 2020- 2021
Trey Burns, TV Portrait (Patrick), screen print, 2020
Trey Burns, “Lubbock Rock”, 2020
Zachary Francois, All Wrapped Up, mixed media, 2020