Joshua Mosley
21 Sep - 20 Oct 2007
JOSHUA MOSLEY
”dread”
Reception for the artist, Friday, September 21 2007, 5:00pm - 7:30pm
This exhibition marks the American premiere of Joshua Mosley's new mixed-media high-definition video and sculpture installation dread, which debuted this summer at the Venice Biennale.
Inspired by his readings of Pascale's Pensées and Rousseau's Emile, Mosley presents an imagined conversation between the two philosophers on the difficulty resolving the human relationship to nature and existence while also accepting God as the creator. As the two philosophers walk together through the forest, they observe nature and encounter a wild dog. Rousseau argues that nature is ordered by God and hence it is good while Pascale counters that all things are unto themselves. The climax comes when Rousseau's absolute trust in nature leads to his demise as he is attacked by the dog.
Mosley continues his interest in philosophy and human nature while he further explores the mediums of sculpture and animation. The figures of the cow and the dog stem from the artist's interest in the history of animation and present a minimalist take on the typically monstrous depictions of animals. The dog has one head instead of three, and the cow does not have four human figures emerging from her back. The form of Dread, and his name, takes after the dog subject of Eadweard Muybridge's photographic motion study.
Mosley constructed clay and resin figures which were then 3D scanned for the animation capturing the hand-modeled surface, then cast in bronze to make a fixed physical impression. For Mosley, the numeric figurative meshes that resulted from the scanning seems to suggest that the characters' minds are not necessarily pressurized in their bodies, instead their minds can be equally present in the landscape. The world in which the characters inhabit is comprised of irregular cycles of six enhanced black and white digital photographs. The artist also composed the score in a way that relates to the sampling process of the animation; in essence it is an intricate assembly of short recordings of single notes.
Joshua Mosley is Associate Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and was the recipient of the 2006 Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Upcoming one-person exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
”dread”
Reception for the artist, Friday, September 21 2007, 5:00pm - 7:30pm
This exhibition marks the American premiere of Joshua Mosley's new mixed-media high-definition video and sculpture installation dread, which debuted this summer at the Venice Biennale.
Inspired by his readings of Pascale's Pensées and Rousseau's Emile, Mosley presents an imagined conversation between the two philosophers on the difficulty resolving the human relationship to nature and existence while also accepting God as the creator. As the two philosophers walk together through the forest, they observe nature and encounter a wild dog. Rousseau argues that nature is ordered by God and hence it is good while Pascale counters that all things are unto themselves. The climax comes when Rousseau's absolute trust in nature leads to his demise as he is attacked by the dog.
Mosley continues his interest in philosophy and human nature while he further explores the mediums of sculpture and animation. The figures of the cow and the dog stem from the artist's interest in the history of animation and present a minimalist take on the typically monstrous depictions of animals. The dog has one head instead of three, and the cow does not have four human figures emerging from her back. The form of Dread, and his name, takes after the dog subject of Eadweard Muybridge's photographic motion study.
Mosley constructed clay and resin figures which were then 3D scanned for the animation capturing the hand-modeled surface, then cast in bronze to make a fixed physical impression. For Mosley, the numeric figurative meshes that resulted from the scanning seems to suggest that the characters' minds are not necessarily pressurized in their bodies, instead their minds can be equally present in the landscape. The world in which the characters inhabit is comprised of irregular cycles of six enhanced black and white digital photographs. The artist also composed the score in a way that relates to the sampling process of the animation; in essence it is an intricate assembly of short recordings of single notes.
Joshua Mosley is Associate Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and was the recipient of the 2006 Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Upcoming one-person exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.