Made of long, thin boxes of Plexiglas, from certain angles, they appear to float. On their outward facing surfaces, color, texture and shimmer hover over the wall, while the boxes themselves are filled with light, so that the pieces are lit from within. A spark of light from a lamp or a change in the angle of sun might set off a cascade of shifting hues. What was one thing becomes another. Moment to moment. Day to day. Different, fluid, transforming.
These are Ron Cooper’s Combos, the newest iteration of his Vertical Boxes series. The Combos are created by joining two (or sometimes more) smaller two-foot sections of the Plexiglas boxes together. These combinations play with juxtaposing different colors and textures – for example a shimmering gold above textured blue, or a translucent yellow above a strangely crinkled and roiling gray-pink-blue.
In the gallery along with the Combos are two of his favorite retrofitted racers. For Cooper, becoming an artist wasn’t a forgone conclusion, as a young man he was drawing hotrods, sure he would become the greatest car builder in the world. Art interceded. But today Cooper enjoys both, building and racing cars and continuing to explore light and space with his art.
