PRESS RELEASE // Press Materials:

COREY HELFORD GALLERY presents

COOP
“Idle Hands”

Opening Reception Friday, July 15, 2011 from 7‑10pm
On View July 15 - August 3, 2011

Corey Helford Gallery
8522 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232
T: 310-287-2340

On Friday, July 15, Corey Helford Gallery will debut “Idle Hands,” the highly-anticipated solo exhibition of pop artist COOP, and his most audacious yet.

COOP’s new body of work is rendered in his signature style—self-described as “hillbilly sex crime pop art”—and features the bold colors and subject matter he is known for but with a decidedly bawdier bent. “Pulp magazines, more overt sexuality and a little more deliberate provocation are on display this time around,” COOP says of the full-figured muses, bodacious backsides and sexed-up superheroes featured in “Idle Hands.”

“Idle Hands” is the artist’s first solo show since his highly regarded and extremely successful 2009 exhibition at Corey Helford Gallery, and features an advancement in his work. “My goal was to keep building on the previous work, and dial in all the stuff that makes it work, while tweaking the things that don’t,” COOP explains. “I’ve been working on refining my technique and visual vocabulary for these paintings, trying to crack the code to maximize impact, playing with different materials, including more text and texture, anything to keep the process interesting for me.”

The exhibition features more than a dozen preliminary sketches and drawings and eight large-scale paintings, including “Startling/Defending the Uncanny Valley Against the Attack of the Xenophallitesa,” a 72-by-72-inch acrylic and enamel painting of a pink chrome robot woman who is as powerful and sexy as the restored engine of a 1932 Ford Coupe.

“Idle Hands” is named after a luxury COOP rarely enjoys, and is also the title of his upcoming book to be published by Baby Tattoo Press, which will showcase the works in this exhibition.

The opening reception takes place on Friday, July 15, 2011 at Corey Helford Gallery. The reception is free and open to the public, and the exhibition will be on view through August 3, 2011.

Complete set of press images
Download here.

Artist interviews and additional preview image requests
Please contact angelique@charmschoolcie.com

Opening night photos
To request photos from the opening night reception, please email us.

Born in Bixby, Oklahoma, Chris Cooper, AKA COOP, began his art career at the tender age of two, with crayons in hand. Shortly after the ink was dry on his high school diploma, he left his home state for Los Angeles where he landed his first solo exhibition in 1993 and has been steadily taking over the art world with exhibitions at galleries and museums worldwide. Inspired by hot rodding, car culture, B-movie monsters, sexploitation flicks and the world of fetish, COOP parlayed his artistic talent into a merchandising empire, creating custom collections of fine art prints, rock and roll posters, artist-series apparel, lifestyle accessories, skateboards, toys, and books “The Devil’s Advocate,” “The Big Fat One” and the forthcoming “Idle Hands,” which will be released this year by Baby Tattoo Press. COOP’s commissioned work is equally as spectacular. He has produced over 100 posters, including rock posters for Nirvana, Soundgarden, The Sex Pistols and album cover art for notable bands such as Mono Men, Lords of Acid, Ramones and NOFX. COOP’s commercial talent extends to a multitude of creative projects, including a series of limited-edition gambling chips and a customized Escalade for the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas, as well as directing music videos and designing major ad campaigns for various clients. Numerous publications have featured COOP, including ArtWeek, Paper and Juxtapoz magazine, which notes COOP’s name is “now more recognizable to modern youth than that of Rembrandt.” For more information about the artist, please visit www.coopstuff.com.

About Corey Helford Gallery
Located in the Culver City Art District, Corey Helford Gallery was established in April 2006 by Jan Corey Helford and her husband, television producer and creator, Bruce Helford (The Drew Carey Show, George Lopez, The Oblongs). Passionate art collectors, the Helfords are producers on the art documentary The Treasures of Long Gone John and have partnered to open their first gallery. Corey Helford Gallery presents a wide range of artists, from members of the new fine art movement, such as Ron English, Josh Agle (SHAG), Buff Monster, COOP, Natalia Fabia, Korin Faught, Sylvia Ji, Eric Joyner, Chloe Early, Ray Caesar, and award-winning photographer Chris Anthony, to early Modernist William S. Schwartz. Renowned for its notable exhibitions, the gallery has presented “Charity By Numbers”, which was co-curated by Gary Baseman and featured an unprecedented lineup of artists including Mark Ryden, Marion Peck, Shepard Fairey, Todd and Kathy Schorr, Camille Rose Garcia, and Michael Hussar, as well as “La Noche de la Fusion”, an epic Carnivalesque festival and solo exhibition for Pervasive artist Gary Baseman. In 2010, Corey Helford Gallery partnered with Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery for the transatlantic collaboration “Art From The New World”, a world-class United Kingdom museum exhibition showcasing work by a formidable group of 49 of the finest emerging and noted American artists. Corey Helford Gallery presents new exhibitions approximately every four weeks. For more information and an upcoming exhibition schedule, please visit coreyhelfordgallery.com.

Corey Helford Gallery
8522 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232
T: 310-287-2340
Open Tuesday - Saturday, Noon to 6:00pm
www.coreyhelfordgallery.com
twitter.com/coreyhelford