Damian Moppett: Studio Dreams
Damian Moppett “The Sculptor’s Studio is a Painting” 2010 Installation view Courtesy Catriona Jeffries
Damien Moppett’s latest exhibition, “The Sculptor’s Studio is a Painting,” is a category-crosser. In it, the artist makes use of a comfortably expanded field of art production where painting, sculpture, photography, drawing and collage are all part of the mix; these become platforms that take recognizable motifs from Moppett’s past works and push them into new realms of abstraction. It’s a private, esoteric language of form that eschews easy reference yet bears tribute to art-world precursors like Brancusi, Moore, Caro and Guston. Drawings and other wall works seem to revolve around hybrid speculations, imagining what a sculpture might look like if it crossed Moore’s Archer with Caro’s Early One Morning. A pair of framed ink drawings made during a recent London residency show a burning candle and studio space paired in a dissolving homage to the fruits of inspiration and action. As the gallery press release notes, “By creating the series of sculptural works in the same intuitive manner in which he creates paintings, Moppett is now able to fold the condition of the studio, the frame of painting and the sculptural arena into constantly shifting layers of visual language.” The net result is a dialect of imaginative content that speaks across diversities of form. (274 E 1 Ave, Vancouver BC)
| |
|
Damian Moppett Untitled 2010 Courtesy Catriona Jeffries |
| |
|
Damian Moppett Orange Candle 2010 Courtesy Catriona Jeffries |
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
