Santa Monica College Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery
ANDY MOSES A 30 YEAR SURVEY
Curated By: Marian Winsryg February 14 - March 25, 2017
Santa Monica College Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery 1310 11th St. Santa Monica, CA 90401 PH:310-434-3434
I’ve always loved Andy’s work. It’s interesting how it embraces many dialogues within the history of painting, from nature, landscape, and science to abstraction. The paintings embrace everything while at the same time a sense of negation is always present. This polarity allows you to discover your relationship with the work itself. There’s always a sublime beauty within the work. The comingling of time and space, both real and abstract, is one of the most relevant aspects of Andy’s work to me. Moses’s work is powerful and extreme, from the beginning to today, in concept and execution.
Jeff Koons
Peter and Susan Barrett Art Gallery, 2015, Photograph: Alan Shaffer
ANDY MOSES: THE
KNOWN UNIVERSE
By Peter Frank Whether by nature or by nurture, Andy Moses takes painting very seriously. He regards the act of painting as a three-way dialogue between idea, image, and process. This requires more mental and physical equilibrium than painters normally manifest, preferring as they do (certainly of late) to concentrate either on picture or on paint. Moses would rather expose the “subjects of the artist,” as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko called them, through the making of painting than as a result of that making. To be sure, Moses recognizes the distinction that persists between idea, image, and process, even as he capitalizes on the fluidity between these states of being. He does not presume their integration, certainly not in the context of contemporary artistic discourse; nor does he argue polemically for that integration. Rather, he has taken it upon himself to integrate the three factors: if contemporary art, for better or for worse, has separated them one from the other, Moses now chooses to reunify them – integrating them once again, but integrating them in a different manner than before, a manner at once more self-aware and more perceptually thorough than contemporary painting is wont to allow itself. Moses was raised in an ethos of painting for its own sake. The practical gambits upon which his father, abstractionist Ed Moses, has long relied to examine the act and the materiality of painting come as second nature to the younger painter. From the first, however, Andy Moses has sought to apply painting to issues beyond painting itself. These are issues of perception, and it can be argued that Moses’ early and continuing exposure to the work of and talk among his father’s friends, prominent figures in the Finish/Fetish and Light-and-Space movements, now undergirds his approach to art-making. A painting, he argues, can help you see, or at least understand how you see. Its material realities address themselves not simply to the viewer, but to the act of viewing. Painting is a medium for perception, not just a medium to be perceived. As well, Moses’ studies at the California Institute of the Arts – at a time when the school was dominated by prominent conceptual artists such as John Baldessari, Douglas Huebler, Barbara Kruger, and Michael Asher (all of whom were Moses’ teachers) – emphasized the informational, linguistic, and phenomenological aspects of artistic practice in general, and of painting in particular. Indeed, Moses can be identified as part of a generation of Cal Arts painters who supported their engagement of a supposedly “outmoded” discipline with rigorous theoretical investigation of praxis and content. Among the first artists Moses met upon moving
(with several of his Cal Arts cohort) to New York in 1981 were a large number of painters grounded in the arguments of the 1970s and examining conceptualist and post-conceptualist discourse through their medium. In the context of mid-1980s New York, where Moses began his career, such perceptual reflexivity and conceptual critique manifested in a restless focusing and re-focusing upon the image as a material presence. Especially in the wake of neo-expressionism and the emergence of “neo-geo,” Moses’ early paintings are deliberately, self-consciously, and aggressively heady. They are clearly driven by the sensuousness of his materials, but they aim at a rhetorical positing of the conditions of viewing. In making them Moses called on art history, especially modern art history, for at least some of their authority, and engaged in extreme contrasts of scale in the articulation of their imagery. He says that he wanted to work in both “galactic space” and “microscopic space,” and to work with the illusory conditions of this spatiality, with subtle visual detail, and with the facture of paint. Moses grew to view his “explosive and primordial” imagery as embodying a kind of discursive presence, one that commanded its own narrative, or at least engaged a narrative impulse and structure exterior to the painting itself. He brought that impulse and structure into his painting, literally, by copying columns from the New York Times’ Tuesday Science section into the compositions. “I felt like I was dealing with information on an infinite time scale as well as on a very transitory one,” Moses recalls, noting that the imagery continued to reflect astrophysics and sub-atomic physics alike, especially in the imagined births and deaths of physically complex entities. Early in the 1990s Moses put aside this conceptual approach to his micro-macro dialogue to return to a more intuitive, and decidedly more material-centered, practice – as he says, he would “find these paintings in the act of making them,” especially as they included coffee grounds and the deep, earthy tones they provide. He soon evolved to a more directly pictorial format, one that continued to embrace a notion of galactic space but now, filling the canvas, taking on new breadth. During this time Moses was living mostly out at the eastern tip of Long Island, and was allowing the relative solitude and the expanse of both earthbound and celestial nature – proximity to the stars hardly less than proximity to the water – to have a direct effect on his visual thinking.
Andy Moses painting “Negative Reversal”, 1987. Fondazione dl Museo di Palazzo Moroni.
In early 2000 Moses moved back to Los Angeles and to the ubiquity of sunlight. Almost immediately he sought to make work responsive to his new environment – and almost immediately determined what that work would be. Following on the kernel of an idea planted two decades earlier, in his words, “it suddenly became apparent that I could make paintings on a curved surface that would reflect light as well as cause the iridescent and interference colors that I had long been working with to shift and move as you walked around the painting.” Over the next several years Moses pared his painterly practice to a method dependent on poured pigment. He applied this method to convex and (especially) concave as well as flat surfaces, allowing not just for a new kind of perceptual depth, but a perceptual depth that is itself in flux, even seemingly in motion. Certainly, these “wave” paintings, Moses’ signature work, echo the perpetual restlessness of the sea – and no less the perpetual restfulness of the horizon. They are filled with possibility and ambiguity. They build upon the pictoriality of the New York paintings, as well as on their scientific references. (In capitalizing on fractal patterns, the wave paintings of the
mid-2000s even echo the micro-macrocosm relationships established in the paintings of the mid-80s.) But these new paintings move away from the New York work’s fixed, dialectical relationships. They do not tell you what you are looking at, they ask you what you are looking at. The availability of light throughout the fabric of southern California life had re-kindled in Moses the perceptualist thinking of his father’s generation – and the materials with which he was already working were tailor-made for realizing this undertaking. The “wave” paintings, in their many two- and three-dimensional forms, constitute the bulk of Moses’ art in California. But, of course, they continue to evolve – in structure and meaning as well as in appearance. In one recent series he has incorporated images appropriated from Renaissanceand Baroque-era textbooks on Alchemy, a “pseudo-science” (or, if you would, art) concerned with the transformation of elements. Moses thus declares his debt to conjurers of yore. In another series, still current, the agglomerations of meandering lines and elusively colored passages that normally spread across entire surfaces now curve around themselves and form odd, balloon-like shapes silhouetted against a monochrome ground. It is as if the ocean or the sky or the universe itself has suddenly puckered into a thing, a ball of energy, a zone of circulation, a comet or incipient black hole burgeoning before your eyes. The limitless horizon now curves unto itself. Apparently, goes the latest thinking among astronomers, space is not curved. It is flat, endless, and expanding at an increasing rate of speed. This provides a metaphor for Andy Moses’ artmaking, but not the only metaphor. In Moses’ work, space is curved and not curved, endless and depthless, invisible and optically all-encompassing. These aren’t just pretty pictures designed to seduce, however: their source in physics and astronomy, philosophy and even alchemy is hard-won, through years of Moses’ thought and research. And the results of that research pack a wallop.
Peter Frank Los Angeles January 2017
CHAPTER 1 Black and White
The black and white paintings started with pure experimentation. I worked in black and white for contrast and because it related to the kinds of imagery I was seeking. I sought to make something that felt explosive and primordial opening a window into deep galactic or microscopic space. I also wanted there to be a palpable sense of density and gravity. The surfaces felt like stone, but acted as a window into the infinite. I felt like I had recreated the big bang in my studio. The image would continue to evolve and change through paint reactions even after I walked away. I would return hours later to see different images emerging that I could allow to continue on their path or intervene again and steer in new directions. I learned a lot just by watching. I felt like I had unlocked a secret kind of alchemical force, which ignited my interest in alchemy and material transmutation going forward.
Rock and Roll, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 12 x 16 inches
Long Night, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
Veil of Time, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
Rockin Out, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
Recurrence, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
3 Phase Time, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
Void, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
“History of Building, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches
Confessions of Finitude, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches
“Confessions of Finitude”, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches
Installation View, Annina Nosei Gallery, 1987.
Installation View, Patricia Faure Gallery, 1988.
CHAPTER 2 The Plot Thickens
The New York Science Times paintings evolved over a three year period in New York City from 1988 through 1990. I read the science section of the New York Times every Tuesday. I was interested in adding another layer of information that would reinforce, expand, or even contradict the images I was making through paint reactions. I began by painting a central image that was ambiguous enough to suggest either galactic or microscopic phenomenon in various states of flux. I then silkscreened headlines, stories and images taken from the Science Times. I juxtaposed them to suggest both connections and contradictions between the many disparate phenomena. I wanted to suggest many possibilities simultaneously as well as endless loops for the cycle of life and matter across all scales of space and time.
An abstraction can seem immutable as granite or caught on the wing, like a heave of water, a burst of light. Remarkably Andy Moses will do both within the same canvas.  It’s as if he is kneading the intestines of color, light and time.
Anthony Haden-Guest Photographic experiments at Broome Street Loft New York City, 1990.
X-Ray Lasers Expand Deterioration, 1988, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches Right: X-Ray Lasers Expand Deterioration - Detail
NASA to Probe Heavens Natural Chemicals, 1988, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches Right: NASA to Probe Heavens Natural Chemicals - Detail
Geminga Does Exist in Atomic Weapons, 1988, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches Right: Germinga - Detail
Rapid Changes in Proteins Shows Birth of Matter, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches
Dark Ages of the Cosmos Hidden in Folded Shapes, 1989, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches
Some Thoughts on Self Sacrifice, 1990, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 30 x 40 inches
Sea Hitchhikers Long Journey 1989 acrylic, alkyd, and silkscreen on canvas 60x78 inches
A Period of Intense Activity, 1990, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches
Alchemist’s Notes to Modern Chemistry, 1990, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches
CHAPTER 3 Primordial Forms
The primordial form paintings began in 1992 when I took a summer studio in Montauk, Long Island. I lived in a guesthouse on a cliff overlooking the ocean and had a studio on the more industrial side of town. Over the next eight years, I spent almost half the year immersed in nature and the ocean and the other half in New York City. These paintings definitely came from my immersion or reconnection with nature. After the highly conceptual New York Science Times paintings, I now wanted to make paintings that were immediate and physical, yet were ambiguous and elusive. I had read a lot about about archetypal imagery and the collective unconscious, as well as about particle physics and the interconnectedness between matter, energy and thought at subatomic levels. I had always felt that these notions were connected and I wanted to pursue this idea. I began working with many layers of thinned down acrylic paint and very large pliant brushes. I painted wet paint into a wet background that had been made very smooth by priming and sanding. I would find these paintings in the act the act of making them. I loosely suggested primitive landscapes and then allowed other images to appear as well. In the final layer, I would pour a mixture of thick Turkish coffee and acrylic medium into a wet layer of paint. The hot coffee would flow in unpredictable ways and then clump when it hit the cooler wet paint. The coffee and acrylic paint mixtures would suggest primitive land forms and hint at other types of imagery as well. I was never trying to capture a fixed image but rather the feeling of the Earth in flux or transforming from one state into another. I wanted these images to feel ancient and archetypal, like life and thought just beginning to emerge out of the primordial ooze.
Junkyard on industrial road next to Montauk studio, Summer 1993. Photograph Noel Arikian
Ayahuasca, 1992, acrylic and coffee on paper, 20 x 15 inches Right: Passage of Time, 1992, acrylic, oil and powdered pigment on paper, 20 x 15 inches
Hantsholm, 1993, acrylic, oil and powdered pigment on paper, 27 x 20 inches LEFT: Dreamtime, 1993, acrylic, powdered pigment and coffee on canvas, 45 x 32 inches
Eruption, 1993, acrylic, oil and coffee on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches
Noctilucent, 1994, acrylic and oil on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches
Twilight of the Gods, 1995, acrylic, oil and coffee on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches
Reverberation of the Stone, 1995, acrylic, oil and coffee on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches
Return to the Dreamtime, 1996, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches Transformation, 1995, acrylic, oil and coffee on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches
Lumina, 1996, acrylic, oil and powdered pigment on canvas, 60 x 42 inches
ANDY MOSES RECENT PAINTINGS Opening Reception Saturday, December 2, 1995 6 pm to 9 pm On View December 2 - 16, 1995 and January 6 - 20, 1996
Leonora Vega Gallery
107 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012 Tel & Fax: (212) 274-8102 Gallery Hours Tuesday thru Saturday 12 - 7 pm
CHAPTER 4 Back to the Cosmos
In the mid-nineties, I was still living in Montauk half of the year. During the day I was captivated by the lush greenery and steep cliffs that plunged into the sweeping vista of the Atlantic Ocean. Most nights were spent under the dense Milky Way. Meteor showers were also common during the summer months. These surroundings rekindled my interest in making galactic paintings in conjunction with my earthbound primordial paintings. I now wanted to explore the zone between deep space and the vast depths of the ocean - the two sides of my daily existence in Montauk. These paintings hinted at both both underwater and outer space imagery. Again retaining ambiguity and capturing something that felt unstable, shifting, morphing. Something that was alive.
Montauk Studio, 1997
Organica, detail Organica, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 20 x 16 inches
Hyperspace, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 18 inches diameter Right: Spiralia, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 20 x 16 inches
NGC 501, 1998, acrylic on canvas, 54 inches diameter
The Alchemist, 1998, oil and powdered pigment on panel, 54 inches diameter
NGC 403, 2002, acrylic and oil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches
Deep, 2002, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches
Double Vision, 2002, acrylic on glass, 16 x 20 inches
Double Vision, reverse side
NGC 205, detail, 2002, acrylic and oil on canvas, 24 x 64 inches
I have a painting of Andy’s from the 90’s. I rotate my collection periodically. Every time I hang Andy’s painting I am amazed how fresh and contemporary it looks. I’ve enjoyed watching his process and immense talent grow over the last two decades.
Laddie John Dill
CHAPTER 5 Curving Space
After living in New York for 19 years, I moved back to Los Angeles in early 2000. Intense sunlight filled my new studio and had an immediate impact on how I viewed my paintings. I was living in a shack on the beach and would watch the light move and shift continuously across the surface of the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to make new work that responded to this new environment. One day, I recalled something that had happened in my New York studio back in 1981. I had stretched a canvas very tightly across a poorly constructed stretcher bar. This caused the whole stretcher bar to torque out at the corners. When I hung it on the wall the canvas curved out into space. I was intrigued but couldn’t find a use for it at the time. Twenty years later, with sunlight flooding my studio, it suddenly became apparent that I could make paintings on a curved surface that would reflect light, as well cause the iridescent and interference colors to shift as you moved around the painting. This sculptural element became an important next step. I loved the push and pull between illusionistic space and actual physical space. I was intrigued with how the curve of the support hinted at so many things already suggested by the paintings: the curvature of the horizon, the curvature of the earth, even the curvature of space itself.
Photograph: Manfredi Gioacchini
80 Miles High, 2003, acrylic on canvas over convex wood panel, 24 x 64 inches
When I saw Andy’s first white convex painting in 2003 it marked the place where he went from searching to finding. He has made many more sophisticated paintings since then, but that canvas is so memorable.
James Hayward
Lost Horizon, 2003, acrylic on canvas over convex wood panel, 36 x 80 inches
View From Above, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Breaking the Waves, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 inches
Before the Sea, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 45 x 96 inches
Cirrostratus, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 51 inches diameter
Enigma, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 54 inches diameter
By the Sea, 2004, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches
The Deep, 2005, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 100 inches
Beyond the Sea, 2005, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches
Andy’s talents and creativity come from a deep well of inspiration.
Frank Gehry
Ocean of the Mind, 2006, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches
The Long Kiss Goodnight, 2006, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches
CHAPTER 6 Adding Complexity
My paintings from 2003 to 2007 were the most reductive thus far. Everything I had been pursuing was distilled to its simplest form. The paintings were often composed of one color that gradually got lighter towards the middle converging in one zip of light pulsing across the center. Eventually I began adding complexity. Linear marks started giving way to serpentine lines that meandered across the surface. These lines eventually became patterns. Not the kind of patterns that humans construct but rather the kinds of fractal patterns that exist in nature. Fractals repeat on many different scales in nature. Making these paintings was a way of pushing forward, while also connecting with my past. There was a great sense of flux and movement as well as an ambiguity of scale. They were very suggestive of either desert landscape or ocean meeting sky, yet they were still resolutely abstract. In developing these paintings, I worked with many different color combinations, techniques and approaches to mixing and applying the paint. I also worked in many different aspect ratios and a complex variety of curves.
Andy Moses has created a body of work that emphasizes both the physicality and presence of the canvas and the physicality and presence of living at the edge of the continent. In looking into his work, one senses seeing beyond the horizon line and under the ocean. Sky, water, land and his personal vibrancy become one continuous and interrelated force. These energy fields become one. Â They extend beyond the dimensions of the canvas. The paintings show and suggest both the earthly horizon line, and the visionary horizon line of the self crossing over to become immersed in a transcendental, but down to earth reality. They create a powerful flux between what is seen and what is felt.
Tony Berlant
Photograph: Alan Shaffer
Reflecting the Dawn, 2007, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 40 x 96 inches
Meribah 2009, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches
Installation at Samuel Freeman Gallery, 2008 Left; Latitude 54 14 01, 2008, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches Center: Nocturne Latitude 54 14 01, 2008, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches Right: Tropic Latitude 54 14 01, 2008, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches
Permian Basin 2010, acrylic on canvas over parabolic concave wood panel, 45 x 90 inches
Uncompahgre, 2010, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 62 x 132 inches
Boreas, 2011, acrylic on canvas over parabolic concave wood panel, 45 x 90 inches
Socorro, 2011, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 42.5 x 90 inches
Vortex 101, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
Vortex 105, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches
10th Law of Fluid Dynamics, 2012, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on wood panel, 21.5 x 14.5 inches
Lacuna 03, 2013, acrylic on textured wood panel, 14 x 11 inches
Temple of the Sun, 2013, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 36 x 72 inches
Geomorphology 1401, 2014, acrylic on canvas over parabolic concave wood panel, 45 x 84 inches Right: Geomorphology 1401, side view
CHAPTER 7 Greater Luminosity
In 2014, I abandoned canvas and started painting exclusively on polycarbonate. This opened up many more possibilities with shape because of how strong and malleable it was. It wasn’t absorbent and therefore transmitted more light than the smooth canvas surfaces I had long been working on. This made the paintings appear to be emanating light from within. The combination of the iridescent and interference colors on top of the polycarbonate surfaces was the perfect solution to achieve this greater luminosity - it felt like seeing light in motion.
Photograph: Jim McHugh
Morphology 1601, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 54 x 108 inches
Morphology 1201, 2013, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 54 inches Morphology 1201, side view
Morphology 1205, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 60 inches
Morphology 1210, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 60 inches
Morphology 1208, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 60 inches
Morphology 1208, detail
Morphology 1209, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on convex wood panel, 60 x 60 inches Morphology 1209, side view
Geomorphology 1403, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 45 x 84 inches Right: Geomorphology 1403, side view
QED Morphology 1201, 2014, acrylic on smooth and textured polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 48 x 72 inches Right: QED Morphology 1201 detail
QED Morphology 1202, 2014, acrylic on smooth and textured polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 48 x 54 inches Right: QED Morphology 1202, detail
Morphology 1505, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 54 x 78 inches
Morphology 1602, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 57 x 90 inches
QED 01, 2014, acrylic on textured polycarbonate mounted on wood panel, 16 x 18 inches
CHAPTER 8 Going Vertical
Because of the malleability of the polycarbonate surfaces, I was now able to push the sculptural aspect of my work even further. I wanted to go vertical. I was very excited with the first vertical curve painting I made in 2014. It was eighteen inches deep at the top and came flush to the wall at the bottom. It was hard to get the right perspective on it at eye level so I hung it up ten feet off the floor. When you looked up you saw this curved painting coming off the wall. It felt like a wave coming over you, so it had this real connection to nature. It also related to architecture and suggested a large cornice moulding that might be in an old palazzo or church. I made a series of these paintings that I was very satisfied with. I realized after looking at them for awhile that I could cut into the left and right sides and make them parabolic, like I had with some of my earlier horizontal curves. This gave them an even greater sense of illusion. The vertical curve paintings from 2015 and 2016 felt like the culmination of years of thinking about curve and luminosity. The bottom edge of these paintings would really light up as your eye was seeing the light reflecting off the surface at a much more direct angle. Meanwhile, the top would recede into darkness as the light was reflected down towards the floor. The curve was now really functioning with the paint to create a much more complex and fulfilling viewing experience. During the same time period, I made a series of leaning curves. The feeling of gravity was palpable as the painting would gently curve towards the wall under the force of its own weight. The leaning curves were the perfect way to present some new painting techniques that I had been experimenting with for years.
R.A.D. 1001, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on vertical concave wood panel Installation at William Turner Gallery, 2014.
R.A.D. 1001, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 40 x 48 inches
R.A.D. 1202, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 44 x 75 x 11 inches
R.A.D. 1501, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on vertical concave wood panel, 49 x 84 x 18 inches
TMA 2001, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate on wood stand, 108 x 60 inches
R.A.D. 1601, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on parabolic wood panel, 60 x 84 x 7 inches Right: R.A.D. 1601, side view
Geomorphology 1702, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on parabolic wood panel, 59 x 95 x 6 inches Right: Geomorphology 1702, detail
TMA 1001, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate on wood stand, 80 x 48 inches Right: TMA 1001 side view
Making the works entails a kind of wrangling of chaos. More than a painterly technique, his composition resembles an orchestration of observed natural phenomena: gravity, viscosity, hydrodynamics. He manipulates thickness instead of brushwork, motion instead of gesture, to replicate both natural and transformational processes, forcing idea and matter into a conscious collaboration. Such is the texture of the new visual language Moses is evolving; reaching toward an essential way in which to convey the thrilling, vertiginous simultaneity of those moments in nature when the convergence of abstract aesthetic and emotional possibilities approaches the sublime.
Shana Nys Dambrot
R.A.D. 1502, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on parabolic vertical concave wood panel, 55 x 77 x 7 inches
R.A.D. 1704, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on parabolic vertical concave wood panel, 70 x 95 x 7 inches
Ouroboros (printed side), 2016, acrylic and photographic transfer on polycarbonate in concave frame on wood stand, 78 x 54 inches
Ouroboros, painted side
Morphology 226, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate with photographic transfer in wood frame, 21.5 x 14.5 inches
Morphology 226, printed side
CHAPTER 9 Electrifying the Color
Since 1990, I had been working with iridescent and interference colors. They have this very amorphous airy feeling, like pure light. I felt that I had explored this quality in a deep and thorough way. Now I was ready to turn up the volume and the contrast. My early black and white paintings had an almost electrical charge to them because of their extreme contrast. I had experimented with fluorescent colors at many different times over the years but never got the exact results that I was looking for. In fact, the last time I had tried them I really couldn’t get them to ow and differentiate and create patterns like the other acrylic colors that I was using. This time I was determined to make them work. It took some experimentation to get them to behave the way that I wanted. I figured that I would work in a palette of different fluorescent colors and black for contrast. The first paintings that I made using these fluorescent colors were mostly blues and oranges with some black and reds. When I stood back and looked at these paintings they felt electrified. I feel like I am just at the beginning of pushing these extreme color combinations and am very excited about what lies ahead.
Morphology 1211, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 59 inches
Morphology 1212, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 59 inches
Geomorphology 1703, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 63x95 inches
Geomorphology 1801, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 73 x 107 inches
CHAPTER 10 Returning to the Primordial Form
I keep returning to this image of a rock. For me, rocks represent many things simultaneously. They represent the Philosopher’s stone, in both the Alchemical and Chinese traditions. When I see a rock standing in an open space it reads as sculpture - perhaps the first sculpture. Holding a rock in my hand is very satisfying. It makes me feel connected to the Earth. I feel something of its magnetic charge, both powerful and grounding. A rock appears static but it’s actually had an amazing journey. It may have started as molten elements at the core of the Earth and then exploded into the sky and descended back to Earth. Each rock has had its unique journey - it may have metamorphosized, or traveled great distances, then weathered yet stood the test of time. A rock has born witness to generation upon generation of human triumph and folly and holds the wisdom of eons. They have been a life long obsession because they are the closest object we can grasp that hints at the eternal.
Photograph: Jim McHugh
It’s the depth of what you do that matters. Andy’s search is deep.
Larry Bell
Metamorph 1501, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood on panel, 57 x 82 inches Right: Metamorph 1501, detail
Metamorph 1503, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate, 67 x 95 inches
Metamorph 1502, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate, 67 x 95 inches Right: Metamorph 1502 - Detail
“Metamorph 1502”, detail 1
Geomorph 1504, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on wood panel, 70 x 95 inches
Andy Moses CV Born in Los Angeles, CA, 1962 Lives and works in Venice, CA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2017 30 Year Survey – Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery Santa Monica College, CA 2017 William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2015 Peter Marcelle Project, Southampton, NY 2014 William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2010 William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2010 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2009 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2008 Bjorn Ressle Gallery, New York, NY 2008 Samuel Freeman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2008 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2007 Jacob Karpio Gallery, San Jose, Costa Rica 2007 Galleri S.E Bergen, Norway 2007 Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2006 McClain Gallery, Houston, TX 2006 Patricia Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2005 Patricia Faure Gallery Los Angeles, CA 2005 McClain Gallery, Houston, TX 2004 Virginia Miller Gallery, Coral Gables, FL 2004 Patricia Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2003 Off Main Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1998 Leonora Vega Gallery, New York, NY 1997 Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1996 Leonora Vega Gallery, New York, NY 1995 Leonora Vega Gallery, New York, NY 1988 Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1987 Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, NY 1981 California Institute of the Arts Valencia, CA MUSEUM AND INSTITUTIONAL EXHIBITIONS 2017 30-Year Survey – Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery Santa Monica College, CA 2016 Mana Contemporary, “Made in California”, Jersey City, NJ 2016 Ramapo College Art Gallery, Mahwah, NJ 2015 Mana Contemporary, “Made in California”, Miami, FL 2014 Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, “Environmental Impact”, Malibu, CA 2014 Laguna Art Museum, “Selections from the Permanent Collection”, Laguna Beach, CA 2012 Museum of Art & History, “Inaugural Exhibition”, Lancaster, CA 2011 Villa Di Donato, “Immaterial Spaces”, Naples, Italy
2010 Contemporary Arts Center, “Elements of Nature”, New Orleans, LA 2009 Laguna Art Museum, “Collecting California”, Laguna Beach, CA 2009 Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, “Elements of Nature”, Malibu, CA 2008 Laguna Art Museum, “Recent Acquisitions”, Laguna Beach, CA 2008 American Jewish University, Los Angeles, CA 2007 Frederick R Weisman Foundation, “Made In California”, Malibu, CA 2006 Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, “LA Art Scene”, Los Angeles, CA 2005 Riverside Art Museum, “Flow”, Riverside, CA 2003 Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Los Angeles, CA 1988 Newport Harbor Art Museum, “Skeptical Beliefs”, Newport Beach, CA 1987 Fondazione Michetti, Franca Villa Al Mare, Italy
Photograph: Alan Shaffer
SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 William Turner Gallery, “Strata”, Santa Monica, CA 2016 Melissa Morgan Fine Art, “Neo-Psychedelia”, Palm Desert, CA 2015 William Turner Gallery, “Confluence”, Santa Monica, CA 2014 LA Artcore, “Elements”, Los Angeles, CA 2013 William Turner Gallery, “Skin/Deep”, Santa Monica, CA 2013 Melissa Morgan Fine Art, “Luminous”, Palm Desert, CA 2012 William Turner Gallery, “Ed’s Party: Spheres of Influence in the LA Art Scene”, Santa Monica, CA 2011 William Turner Gallery, “The Gleam in the Young Bastard’s Eye”, Santa Monica, CA 2010 Metro Pictures, “Swell”, NY, NY 2010 Peter Blake Gallery, “Summer Group Show”, Laguna Beach, CA 2010 William Turner Gallery, “Material Matters”, Santa Monica, CA 2010 Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA 2009 Bjorn Ressle Gallery, “Winder Salon”, New York, NY 2009 The Black Cat Gallery, “Darkwave”, Culver City, CA 2009 Eric Phleger Gallery, “In A Different Light”, Leucadia, CA 2009 Melissa Morgan Fine Art, “Inaugural Exhibition”, Palm Desert, CA 2009 Arena 1 Gallery, “Weekend”, Santa Monica, CA 2009 Phantom Gallery, “Surface of Space”, Long Beach, CA 2008 Arts Manhattan, “DNA Evolution”, Manhattan Beach, CA 2008 MODAA, “Liquid Light”, Culver City, CA 2008 Peter Blake Gallery, “15 Years 15 Artists”, Laguna Beach, CA 2008 Nuuanu Gallery, “California Dreamin”, Honolulu, HI 2008 Modern Masters Fine Art, “Finish Fetish @ MMFA”, Palm Desert, CA 2008 Pharmaka Gallery, “Surface of Space”, Los Angeles, CA 2007 dba Gallery 256, “Liquid Light”, Pomona, CA 2007 Peter Blake Gallery, “West Coast Abstraction”, Laguna Beach, CA 2007 Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, NY 2007 Arena 1 Gallery, “Pink III”, Santa Monica, CA 2006 Gallery C, “LA Minimalism Today”, Hermosa Beach, CA 2006 George Billis Gallery, “All in the Family”, Los Angeles, CA 2005 Patricia Faure Gallery, “Pink”, Los Angeles, CA 2005 Berman/Turner Projects, “Flow”, Los Angeles, CA 2004 Spike Gallery, New York, NY 2004 Cartelle Gallery, “Pink”, Los Angeles, CA 2004 Patricia Faure Gallery, “White on White”, Los Angeles, CA
2004 Atheneum, La Jolla, CA 2003 Gallery C, “The Art of Paint”, Hermosa Beach, CA 2003 Double Vision Gallery, “Double Vision”, Los Angeles, CA 2002 Anita Shapolsky Gallery, “New Concepts”, New York, NY 2002 SpaceProject, “EleMental”, Hollywood, CA 2002 Arts Manhattan, “Close Proximity”, Manhattan Beach, CA 1997 Nabi Gallery, “To the End and Beyond”, Sag Harbor, NY 1996 Millennium Gallery, East Hampton, NY 1994 Cambell Thiebaud Gallery, “Lana International”, San Francisco, CA 1993 Leonora Vega Gallery, New York, NY 1992 Newspace, “Instincts of Intuition”, Los Angeles, CA 1991 Hallwalls, “Pleasure”, Buffalo, NY 1990 Amy Lipton Gallery, “New Metaphysical”, New York, NY 1990 Marta Cervera Gallery, “Matter and Memory”, New York, NY 1988 Asher/Faure Gallery, “Unstable Universe”, Los Angeles, CA 1987 Annina Nosei Gallery, “Spacial Effects”, New York, NY 1987 Asher/Faure Gallery, “Topology”, Los Angeles, CA 1986 Artist’s Space, “Selections”, New York, NY AWARDS 1987 Premio Michetti, Fondazione Michetti, Italy EDUCATION 1979 - 1982 California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
Acknowledged Collectors Rock and Roll, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 12 x 16 inches. Collection of Avilda Moses Long Night, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches. Collection of Fondazione Michetti Recurrence, 1986, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 60 x 90 inches. Collection of Avilda Moses History of Building, 1987 acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches. Collection of Ed Moses Confessions of Finitude, 1987, acrylic and alkyd on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches. Collection of Bernard and Rosalie Kornblau Alchemist’s Notes to Modern Chemistry, 1990, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on canvas, 67.5 x 90 inches. Collection of Stassia Stakis Some Thoughts on Self Sacrifice, 1990, acrylic, alkyd and silkscreen on paper, 30 x 40 inches. Collection of Samuel Freeman Passage of Time, 1992, acrylic, oil and powdered pigment on paper, 20 x 15 inches. Collection of Daphna Kastner Dreamtime, 1993, acrylic, powdered pigment and coffee on canvas, 45 x 32 inches. Collection of Avilda Moses Noctilucent, 1994, acrylic and oil on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches. Collection of Gregg Fussell and Gianna Madrini Reverberation of the Stone, 1995, acrylic, oil and coffee on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches. Private Collection Transformation, 1995, acrylic, oil and coffee on canvas, 90 x 67.5 inches. Collection of Richard Weisman Lumina, 1996, acrylic, oil and powdered pigment on canvas, 60 x 42 inches. Collection of Margaret and Daniel S. Loeb Organica, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 20 x 16 inches. Collection of: Collection of Laddie Dill Spiralia, 1996, acrylic on masonite, 20 x 16 inches. Collection of Ed Moses Deep, 2002, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches. Collection of Arnold and Homeira Goldstein 80 Miles High, 2003, acrylic on canvas over convex wood panel, 24 x 64 inches. Collection of Ingrid Boon View From Above, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 40 inches. Private Collection, Los Angeles, CA Cirrostratus, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 51 inches diameter. Collection of Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation By the Sea, 2004, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Esther Chui Chao The Deep, 2006, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 100 inches. Collection of Avilda Moses Beyond the Sea, 2005, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of Rob and Emily Hoyt Luna Sea, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 62 x 132 inches. Collection of 717 West Olympic Corporation The Long Kiss Goodnight, 2006, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Private Collection, Houston, TX Ocean of the Mind, 2006, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of Laura Neuhoff in loving memory of Michael Neuhoff Reflecting the Dawn, 2007, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 40 x 96 inches. Collection of Laguna Art Museum purchased with funds from Murray and Ruth Gribin Nocturne Latitude 54 14 01, 2008, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of Eric and Joan Davidson Latitude 54 14 01, 2008, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of the Ritz Carlton, Los Angeles, CA
Meribah, 2009, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of Dr. Luis and Cecilia Campos Tropic Latitude 54 14 01, 2008, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 54 x 114 inches. Collection of Gisela Colon and Steve Eglash Uncompahgre, 2011, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 62 x 132 inches. Collection of Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Cloobeck Permian Basin, 2010, acrylic on canvas over parabolic concave wood panel, 45 x 90 inches. Collection of Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Socorro, 2011, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 42.5 x 90 inches. Collection of Robert and Elizabeth Deere Boreas, 2011, acrylic on canvas over parabolic concave wood panel, 45 x 90 inches. Collection of Salem Partners Vortex 101, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches. Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Temple of the Sun, 2013, acrylic on canvas over concave wood panel, 36 x 72 inches. Collection of Scott and Audrey Blum Geomorphology 1401, 2014, acrylic on canvas over parabolic concave wood panel, 45 x 84 inches. Collection of Tushar and Urvashi Patel Morphology 1201, 2013, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 54 inches. Collection of Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation Morphology 1205, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 60 inches. Collection of Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Morphology 1208, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 60 inches. Collection of Michael and Lauren Sorochinsky Morphology 1209, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on convex wood panel, 60 x 60 inches. Collection of Richard Landry QED Morphology 1201, 2014, acrylic on smooth and textured polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 48 x 72 inches. Collection of Stefan Hammerschmidt and Lawrence Szabo QED Morphology 1202, 2014, acrylic on smooth and textured polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 48 x 54 inches. Collection of Mark and Cathy Louchheim R.A.D. 1001, 2014, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 40 x 48 inches. Collection of Tom and Esther Wachtell R.A.D 1203, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on vertical concave wood panel, 48 x 68 x 6.5 inches. Collection of John and Lana Geddes R.A.D. 1501, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on vertical concave wood panel, 49 x 84 x 18 inches. Collection of Robert Schumacher Morphology 1602, 2015, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 57 x 90 inches. Collection of John and Lana Geddes Geomorphology 1702, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on parabolic wood panel, 59 x 95 x 6 inches. Collection of Joyce Brandman Morphology 1211, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 60 x 59 inches. Collection of Richard Rogers Metamorph 1501, 2016, acrylic on polycarbonate mounted on concave wood panel, 57 x 82 inches. Collection of Arnold and Homeira Goldstein
Photograph: Manfredi Gioacchini