501-918-3025
calsfoundation@cals.org
calsfoundation@cals.org
On View Now in the Loft Gallery—Gregory Moore’s “Biota”
Gregory Moore: Biota
On view through September 25, 2021
Galleries & Bookstore at Library Square, Loft Gallery
In this exhibition of paintings on found objects, a secret world of plants and animals comes alive on decaying scraps from the human realm.
One night, I watched a family of raccoons make their way across my backyard fence. On another occasion, I arrived home late to find an opossum staring calmly at me from my porch. As he waddled away, I wondered where he was off to. I began to imagine a whole secret, invisible, and unofficial world of critters right behind the visible human surface, and I began to make paintings about that world.
— Gregory Moore
Artist’s Statement
I am interested in what manmade debris can tell us about the nature of “the outside.” I find pieces of rusted, dented metal and paint on them in a way that doesn’t obscure their original texture and color. The objects I seek out are unique in their configurations of stains, rust, and damage, and I let those characteristics guide each painting.
Because these scraps have been rejected, they function as a reminder of our collective shadow, and because they undergo processes that our human bodies could not withstand, they bear witness to dramas and stories that go on outside of our daily awareness.
The subject matter I choose is largely informed by the detritus I start with. Often, I evoke or reimagine the scene in which decaying trash might be found (a field of red clover, a cluster of thistles). When I first began painting on found objects, the images that emerged were weeds and wildflowers. Now I find myself letting the metal guide me into more diverse imagery, and I feel an eagerness to be increasingly playful with color and imagination. It is my hope that these works provoke thought about the richness and complexity of elements we might otherwise ignore.
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The Loft Gallery is located in the Galleries & Bookstore at Library Square in the CALS Roberts Library of Arkansas History & Art in the River Market District of downtown Little Rock.
Check the CALS Roberts Library website here: https://robertslibrary.org/visit/location-hours/ for gallery hours and visiting procedures.
