OCHI is pleased to present a solo booth of new paintings by Cooper Cox at The Armory Show 2026. The presentation follows his recent solo exhibition The View from Upstairs at OCHI Los Angeles. The booth will be on view at the Javits Center from September 24 through 27, 2026.

Cox's new body of work shifts his attention to compositions of what typically goes unseen in passing. Subjects alternate between rural and urban, but the approach is the same: Cox is painting what we collect in our periphery instead of the obvious view one stops to take in.

Reflection runs through the booth as a common thread. A body of water holds an upside down landscape undulating in concentric ripples, skyscraper windows catch a city sunset, and wet pavement at night holds sodium light cutting through the dark. Whether the subject is natural or manmade, Cox depicts it secondhand – flattened, doubled, or reorganized by the surface holding it.

The grass paintings work without a literal reflecting surface. Pale blooms emerge from a worked field of blues, greens, and threads of ochre. Where other works in the presentation receive a view as it is returned off water or glass, these paintings close any such distance. It is no longer the cool optics of a mirrored surface, but a slower and more tender regard, demonstrating the potential we might hold in something as unremarkable as a blade of grass.

Cox's impasto ties the work together. Working in oil on linen, he builds surfaces of such density that the paintings register as relief rather than image, each ripple, blade, and pane of glass modeled in paint thick enough to cast its own shadow. The accumulation is structural, the record of decisions made visible. 

The shift from Cox's earlier landscapes is one of scale and orientation rather than concern. He remains a painter of place, but the place has evolved to be the surfaces that catch it back. 

Cooper Cox (b. 1978, Sun Valley, Idaho) received his dual BA in philosophy and sociology from Vanderbilt University. His paintings have been exhibited at venues including OCHI in Los Angeles and Sun Valley; Harper's Gallery in East Hampton, NY and Bangkok, Thailand; Gavlak Gallery in Los Angeles; The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach; the Sun Valley Museum of Art; and Harkawik in New York. He has a forthcoming presentation with Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami, FL. His work has been featured in Surface, Whitehot Magazine, Architectural Digest, Here + There, and Cool Hunting. Cox lives and works between Brooklyn, New York and Sun Valley, Idaho, and is represented by OCHI.