Gregg Moore’s body
of sculptural work is a meditation on time and metamorphosis. Although Moore’s
sculptures are diverse in themes and materials, he explores domestic and
natural environments in a unified body of work that resists categorization.
His sculpture ranges from domestic vessels that are refashioned into collections--
unified by mathematical principles and primary colors-- and re-imagined as
the Gigantic.
His geologically inspired work indicates that creation in both the domestic
and the natural environments are susceptible to the same processes.
He is intrigued by science—his background in geological science providing perhaps the most profound influence upon his work. Here he eschews the separation of art and science as motivating and explanatory systems for understanding the processes of creation. Thus his fascination with “the stratigraphy of culture and the stratigraphy of nature.” Both provide a venue for exposing the surface and form to reveal what lies below. Moore offers the viewer a chance to move to a deeper level of reflection: the underlying structure of a built wall, the shards of human creation, or nature’s detritus. His constructed geological and domestic environments reveal the transformations wrought by time. He finds decay aesthetic, probing surfaces and facades to reveal structure and dirt. “Dirt,” according to anthropologist Mary Douglas, “is matter out of place.” His work offers a conceptual plane to create structure out of chaos, to put dirt back in place. Moore strips away surfaces; he chisels through the earth’s crust to the sedimentary layers formed by gases, minerals, and other particulate elements or offers chinks to permit a view of his interiors: walls, vessels, even of history by depicting interiors or layers of sedimentary rock, fossils, shards, fragments, wooden beams, and enigmatic (impenetrable) hidden spaces (Cabinet (The Human Condition)). Many of his works embrace space as the focal point, upending the usual attention to the object. Oversized pots illuminate this inversion by directing the viewer to their vast interior spaces. Bright yelow birds and luminous coal become metaphors for human consumption and desecration, a pillaging of nature. Oscillating between aesthetic and psychological terms, simultaneously accessible and resistant to the human gaze, Moore’s sculpture is primary and primal. Using a primary palette, he invites the viewer to regard his art but simultaneously places a barrier between viewer and work. Consider (Untitled (Red Slabs)) use of alluring red blocks that attract the viewer. The viewer is drawn to the warmth of the color. However, a shimmering and translucent veneer prohibits closer inspection, prohibits touch. Although the lustrous cover adds a dimension of light to the objects, they signal distance in the face of accessibility. His references are middens, (archaeological sites), Classical glazes from the Chinese Tang dynasty. Moore’s sculpture orients the viewer to human debris and earlier, ancient works of art. Moore is captivated by abstractions and classificatory systems and utilizes color to unify an array of forms that have little in common but for the primary quality of color. Blue, “an ambient color can homogenize the universe.” Sixteen archetypal objects, large and small, oblong and circular, are united by the use of a primary palette and a mathematical algorithm. In this way, the functional and the abstract are also united. The vessels unsuitable for daily activities are intriguing as aggregates. |