January Exhibition: Jazz-minh Moore "Is That All There Is"

Jazz-minh Moore

“Is That All There Is”

January 5 - 28, 2012

Artist’s Reception:
Thursday, January 5, 2012, 6-8pm

Lyons Wier Gallery
542 West 24th St., New York, NY 10011

Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11-6pm

Nearest subway: C,E @ 23rd St & 8th Ave.

Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present, Is That All There Is, its second solo exhibition with Jazz-minh Moore.

Moore’s new series of paintings features her sister, Asia Kindred, amidst the ruins of a deteriorating cabin. The primarily naturalistic pallet is infused with distortion and bright color, causing the compositions to hover between physical and psychological space.

The cabin depicted was the first structure built on the land where the artist was born, deep in the Oregon woods. Over the years and seasons, Moore has watched the dilapidated structure fall into a nest-like geometry that she finds beautiful. The external post and lintel structure has given way to the kind of forgotten, mythical space that a teen might build her fort in; a space wherein secrets can be told and tasted, where the patchy, uneven ground is both soft and solid. It is within this context that Asia is found squatting, or absentmindedly doodling on the fallen boards with a sharp stick. The cabin and the girl are inextricably linked through overlapping compositions. In some works, such as 'The Tower', Asia is almost entirely camouflaged amidst a patterning of light and tattoos.

The idea of aligning one's own experience symbolically with gods in mythical fables is prevalent in Moore’s new body of work. The work speaks obliquely to the artist's disillusionment with monotheistic and patriarchal codes within Western culture. Throughout these paintings, physicality is dominant in the materials, subject matter and process: wood on wood, sex, cutting, and nature. The birch surfaces that inhabit the work also have a voice within the compositions.

Utilizing the wood grain as a landscape to influence her compositions, Moore leaves some sections unfinished, while others are highly rendered. The level of completion is an evolving collaboration between the artist's hand and the organic drawing ‘style’ present in the wood panel itself. Some surfaces are finished with a high gloss resin. Others are left bare. The surface treatment is reflective of the subject matter within each work.

Through a combination of tattoos on her sister's body and archetypes carved into the wood panels of the fallen cabin, Moore creates a personal pantheon of gods to reflect her experiences. These divinities, including a pair of snails in slow fornication, a blue-faced Kali, lines from a Jenny Holzer projection, a sculpture of a laughing pig with a coin-slot asshole by Matthew Weinstein, Medusa, Ouroboros, performance artists Eva and Adele, Lady Rizo, and an inextricable tangle of vines, connect as beings to Moore’s quest for a new iconography.

Jazz-minh Moore received her MFA at California State University, Long Beach, CA and BFA from Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA. She has received numerous grants and scholarships including a NYFA fellowship and a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Moore has produced solo shows in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Paris and has been featured in publications such as Interview, Whitehot and American Art Collector among others. She is the co-founder of the New York City based art collective, Gutbox, and recently participated as a contestant on Season 2 of “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” on Bravo TV. Moore currently works and lives in New York City. “Is That All There Is” was made possible in part by the New York Foundation for the Arts.