COOPER COLE is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of new paintings, wall works, and sculptures by Antonia Kuo and Douglas Rieger. The artists cultivate a reciprocal dialogue between material and form, exploring the threshold between organic, mechanized, and bodily systems. Their works navigate the residue of production and the entropic cycles of creation and collapse, reimagining natural and architectural systems through processes of collage, repetition, and transformation.
Rooted in a shared history of American postindustrial decay, with Kuo’s family having worked in the copper mines of Butte, Montana and Rieger’s family in the coal mines of Pittsburgh, the artists transform remnants of damaged land and infrastructure into sites of poetic reconstruction. The tactile treatment of their materials and the reconfiguration of discarded and manufactured objects evoke the language of industry, the traces of memory, and the persistence of touch.
Kuo’s layered paintings on light-sensitive silver gelatin paper pulse with internal movement, revealing impressions and imprints that echo mechanical operations while retaining a biomorphic quality. The paintings act as sensitive skins, built up through experimental photochemical processing and the application of dyes, pigment, and paint. They serve as indexical records of drawings, photographs, found objects, and gestures of the body. Deluge, a panoramic painting that evokes a turbulent topography marked by frenetic energy, incorporates early sketches Rieger made for his largest sculpture in the exhibition, Dragline. Relief elements punctuate Kuo’s paintings, created from plasma-cut steel, cast-metal detritus, and found metal objects. Metallics and radioactive greens signal both vitality and toxicity, regeneration and ruin.
Drawing from the industrial and the corporeal, Rieger’s sculptures evoke the queer body, the mechanical, the sensual, and the unknown. He pairs meticulously carved wood forms with welded aluminum, layering pigments and paints to create tactile surfaces highlighted by drips and stains. The resulting figures are symbiotic, merging human and machine. Stacked, obsolete machining blocks form the base of the cleft sculpture Overburden. His new wall works incorporate plasma-cut aluminum, welded steel, wood, painted canvas, UV vinyl, wool felt, oil-based clay, and gold leaf. Each piece emerges as a fragment of a speculative environment steeped in desire and decay.
Working in close exchange, Kuo and Rieger sustain a dialogue that mirrors the interconnected systems they explore. Their collaboration, both conceptual and physical, infuses the exhibition with a sense of rhythm, feedback, and transmission. The resulting installation creates an environment where structure and entropy coexist, and where body and landscape are reimagined for the present moment.
Antonia Kuo (b. 1987, New York, NY) lives and works in New York, NY. She received an MFA from Yale University in 2018, her BFA from School of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University in 2009, and a one-year certificate from the School of the International Center of Photography in 2013. In 2024 Kuo had a two-person exhibition with Martin Wong at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle. Her work has been exhibited at Chapter NY, New York; James Cohan, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Manila, PH; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Adams and Ollman, Portland; Project Native Informant, London; Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles; F, Houston; Each Modern, Taipei; among others. Kuo has been an artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, The Banff Centre, and was a MacDowell Colony Fellow. Her work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Indonesia. Kuo currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA.
Douglas Rieger (b. 1984, Pittsburgh, PA) lives and works in New York, NY. He received his MFA from Yale in 2016, and BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008. Rieger’s work has been exhibited at Capsule, Shanghai and Hong Kong; Cadet Capela, Bremond Capela, Paris; Abrons Art Center, Helena Anrather Gallery, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, Hesse Flatow, Below Grand, New York; 1708 Gallery, Richmond; E.Tay Gallery (New York, NY), Parallelogram Gallery (Tampa, FL), amongst others. Rieger currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA.
