Waltz For Coop

I talked with the artist Coop for 20 minutes about the following topics: Mexico, rally racing, drinking, and hot rods. Not mentioned: Art.

For the past three years, the LA-based artist has competed in the La Carrera Panamericana race up the backbone of Mexico to the US border, surviving more than a few hairpin turns and washed out roads. Unlike the Gumball 2000 rally, which has softened over the years from a true race into more of a mobile posing platform, the elites nudging their Rolls Royces cross-country, the biggest danger being a wayward bug hit at five over the limit, Carrera has stayed true to its roots. Racers drive the same vintage cars that thundered over the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the early 1950s. Transit courses are still run on the same pockmarked two-lane roads, with unexpected competition from the locals and only a passing glance of protection from the Federales.

Coop told me about races past, silencing his cell phone when it rang, excitement deep in his voice. And all cliches aside, I felt as if I understood more about his art than if I questioned him about it directly. His forms are just as vibrant and full of life, just as incendiary and raunchy as a decal-sprayed hot rod racing Carrera in the 1950s. His latest collection, shown at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, is crowded with lascivious figures: Smoking devils next to smoking women, all winking cheekily at political correctness.

The real Coop is too busy thinking about racing and adventure to worry if his paintings are too raunchy for the middlebrow. He's too busy working for his play, playing for his work. After all, that makes for the better story.

Originally in Los Angeles Magazine