ART-PRESENTATION: Kevin Cooley-Golden Prospects

Through photography, video, and installation, Kevin’s Cooley work is a meditation on our evolving relationship with technology, nature, and ultimately each other. Cooley works with elemental forces beyond his control, addressing how these forces contend with each other, and how we exist among among them, using his experiences and direct interventions to provide the underlying conceptual framework of his practice.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Archive

On 5/8/15 in an effort to clean up the Gold King Mine on the bank of the Animas River in Southwestern Colorado, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accidentally destroyed a dam, spilling three million gallons of yellow lead-contaminated mine wastewater into Cement Creek, inadvertently polluting water sources in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, and adversely affecting the water supply of thousands of people. In his solo exhibition “Kevin Cooley: Golden Prospects”, commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), the artist presents two multi-channel video installations. Using footage taken after the contamination of nearby rivers and the surrounding landscape, Cooley blurs the line between the natural and the environmentally harmful. In the installation, the water moves from monitor to monitor, metaphorically downstream and into the water supply for millions of people across the USA. With “Golden Prospects”, Cooley points to the difficulties of distinguishing between what is natural and what is caused by human interference, asking us to question whether, and how, to trust the sources that nurture and sustain us. The exhibit is part of an ongoing series of works titled “Water Rites”, that explore the water sources of Los Angeles, and which was first presented in his exhibition “Fallen Water” at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco. As a whole, the series forces us to consider our most precious resources, and to reconcile our current actions with our future world.

Info: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, Duration: 18/12/15-3/4/16, Days & Hours: Wed & Sun: 12:00-18:00, Thu-Sat 12:00-20:00, http://ybca.org