45cbm: Cooper Jacoby : Program – Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

A minimalist room with three hanging wall sculptures and a large ceiling light.

Three metallic teardrop-shaped sculptures are mounted on a white wall under bright fluorescent lights.

Wax moth larva and cocoons in a sealed, resin-preserved honeycomb display.

A clear teardrop-shaped container holding yellow materials and circular metal parts.

Encased honeycomb and bee larvae inside a teardrop-shaped glass display.

A piece of honeycomb inside a transparent resin sculpture.

Close-up image of various coral structures with intricate patterns.

Circular sea organism surrounded by textured coral.

An industrial light fixture emitting orange and white light.

This image shows an overhead grow light with orange and white bulbs mounted in metal frames.

Close-up of an octopus sucker displaying intricate details.

A small sakura flower is preserved in resin.

Artist

Cooper Jacoby

Curator

Moritz Scheper

Thanks to

With the kind support of the Leinemann Stiftung für Bildung und Kunst.

The exhaustion of resources, the digestion of waste and the reconfiguration of existing hardware are key concerns in the practice of Cooper Jacoby (*1989). Matte Wetter (German for ‘choke damp’), his exhibition at the 45cbm studio space, examines the life cycles of optimized materials with a light installation and a series of new wall works based on urban beehives.

Jacoby inverts the ways in which biomorphic aesthetics and holistic metaphors are deployed by design, denaturalizing the supposedly “green” to reveal its toxic core. As carbon emissions have accelerated an epidemic extinction of bees, Jacoby reassembles hives out of honeycomb materials and rare earth minerals used in automotive exhausts. In tandem with their elliptical, discursive connections, these works foreground their sculptural presence through a multifaceted, even uncanny material language.

Cooper Jacoby, born 1989 in Princeton, New Jersey, lives and works in Los Angeles and Düsseldorf. He has had solo shows at Mathew, Berlin, and High Art, Paris, as well as participating in group shows at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles, and White Flag Projects, St. Louis.