A colleague of mine, Ragen Moss, was recently included in the 2018 Whitney Biennial, and she has followed up with a new body of work now on view in NYC at the Bridget Donahue gallery. I thought it was really interesting how she approached the press release for the show, and thought I would share it with you! (Elements of that press release, where Moss speaks in detail about her own work, are excerpted below.)
Ragen Moss’ 8 Animals, installation view at Bridget Donahue NYC
Ragen Moss
8 Animals
November 10, 2019 – January 26, 2020
99 Bowery, 2nd Floor | New York, NY 10002 USA
Two on-going pivot points continue to be centered in the work: asking sculpture to take up the question of interior space; and asking sculpture to productively press the linearity of language against the roundness of form. These points are used to pivot around what it means to be a human operating with full spatiality.The exhibition, 8 Animals, keeps with these ideas; and this is a way to understand how the works are made.
Some other notes:
• Sculpture’s interiority. By using transparent materials, by overloading sculpture’s contour, and by embedding fully resolved sculptures inside each other in layers, the work asks how sculpture can be used to develop a new knowledge of interior space — to treat interiority not merely as a function of time or as the site where thought occurs, but instead to treat interiority as a function of the spatial.
• Lung-like. Through the friction between transparency/opacity, illumination/darkness, sculpted-mark/painted- gesture, each work considers the extent to which it can operate as lungs — as a deployment of energies pulling in or reproducing the limits of its own surroundings. This is a spatial issue, but I also believe it is a useful way of thinking about the 8 animals in the exhibition: as lung-like.
• Couplings. The exhibition’s organizing system is couplings. There are lateral couples (as we are accustom to), but there are also internal couplings. **See couples listed below.
• Handthought. The marks of the work are flat, gridded, textual, diaphanous, matte, judicial, extruded, layered, and handmade. The latter is noteworthy only because it underscores that there is growth occurring with the works because hands are also thinking and learning devices.
• Roundness put against sequence. When handwriting and other text appears within the sculptural work, the contrast between text and form is used to gather information on what it means to be a spatial figure; the suggestion with this is that good particulate can be extracted when the roundness of sculpture is put in tension with the sequentiality of language / writing.
• Figures. To construct the work, I am thinking about figures; and I continue to choose this term to reference the work because it encompasses the formalities of the figure, but also the figure’s inscription by its context, including the language, laws, and politics afforded by that context.
• Animation in sculpture. The 8 animals in the exhibit are also questioning sculpture’s status as a motionless dispatcher of ideas and chasing the importance (or unimportance) of animation within sculpture.
• Space. When the exhibition is approached, it can be looked at as a continuation of an idea that I have been working on for a long time: that sculpture’s categorical imperative might be to teach us about space, and why space is important.
– Ragen Moss
of course I am interested in sculpture, but more so I find interest with Moss’ additional notes; especially sculpture’s interiority and animation concepts. I would have to see the installation of these in person to better understand how she is posing these questions relating to the suspension and roundness of each form speaking to me (the viewer) as well as the forms communicating with each other. I know I often grapple with the spaces – internal and external of my work.
notable… her comments aren’t just notes, but are presented as a formal PRESS RELEASE for a commercial gallery show. I think she is saying a lot with how she is describing her work, and the platform she is using to describe it. It’s a public- commercial platform, and I find her words to be super refreshing with an abundance of clarity!
I relate with this work in that, when creating my figures I have often begun with the torso, and must admit I had always wanted to create the clear shell of a body!