Olivia Gossett Cooper is a conceptual artist based in New York. She works in readymade sculpture, “scratch” paintings, and video.

“I’m moved by the shared nuance of relationship dynamics in the home. What lives between a spouse, parent, child, lover, friend, provider, taker, and neighbor. Our homes may all look very different, but what excites me is that, even with these differences, there are shared dynamics that can unite even the most divergent among us.”

Leverage. Outbursts. Faith. Bending. Weight. Reliance.

Cooper’s sculptures feature charged domestic objects (usually items that once held a place in someone else’s home), paired with equally charged counter-objects. These objects are not neutral. For all of us, they carry weight — physical and emotional — and when reshaped and paired in new ways, they start to expose what stories they hold for each viewer.

In representational painting, we’re taught not to render what we think we see, but what’s actually there. Cooper’s work does something similar: it invites viewers to look again — at the objects they live with every day, and at the relationships those objects quietly represent. Contorting, binding, and pairing these story-filled items so that you actually can see them for the first time. Sometimes the sculptures bring joy. Sometimes they bring self-reflection. Either way, they open up a new way of seeing something that was always there.

Maybe we can learn a little more about ourselves by what comes up for us in those moments. Maybe we can learn a little more about each other.