a curator's office in a micro gallery setting
now at the micro gallery
Business
Andy Moon Wilson
Andy Moon Wilson is at it again. And this time, he means business. Curator's Office is pleased to present a 1000 business card drawing installation plus additional large-format and scroll drawings by this celebrated young artist. Presented in visually digestible zones, the drawings will nonetheless fill the office/micro-gallery in Moon Wilson's characteristic horror vacui style. At times raucous, at times breathtakingly intricate, the drawing installation creates a dense and witty visual and psychological environment. An opening reception for the artist will take place on Saturday, March 3 from 6:30 - 8 pm.
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According to the artist, business is one of the most versatile words in the English language. The word refers to all manners of human endeavor, from the business of minding one’s own business, to the business of the art world, to the mechanics of the global economy - and everything in between. Business was chosen as the title of this exhibition specifically because of the word’s ambiguity. Taken at face value, it refers to the format of the business card drawings, which comprise the focus of the show.
A business card is a focused distillation of identity. In a standardized format, it represents a person, but necessarily a very focused and distorted view of that individual. Usually, a business card identifies what is important about a person, from a business standpoint, with just a few characters and numbers. The business cards Moon Wilson makes do not function in this sense. Individually, they are literal snapshots of himself- physical artifacts recording his thought process as he ruminates about things that he's interested in. Collectively, they combine symbolic imagery with text and other data into a rounded, cryptic, and skewed representation of his identity as he struggles with the complexities of life.
If one considers the subject matter of the individual cards, several recurring themes emerge. Perhaps the most important and overarching themes are those of maturity and masculinity. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be an adult? What does it mean to be "a productive member of society"? Moon Wilson is trying to come to terms with what he thinks it means to be successful as a person philosophically, psychologically, artistically, socially, sexually, financially, and ethically. In doing so, he probes tropes in all of these issues. Rarely does he approach thorny issues head on; rather, he prefers to engage overwhelming concepts obliquely, hoping to land glancing blows. He does this from the refuge of areas of thought he is familiar and comfortable with, such as architecture, formalism, cryptography, geometry, and various subcategories of design.
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Andy Moon Wilson is a young artist based in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned his MA and MFA in drawing at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. As the featured artist at Curator's Office booth at the Scope New York art fair, he was singled out as one of the artists to watch in an article about the fairs in Art in America's May 2006 issue. He has had solo exhibitions at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA; the Greenbelt Art Center, Greenbelt, MD; the Byron Burford Gallery, Iowa City, IA; and the Dixon Eilers Gallery Storm Lake, IA. Group exhibitions include Get This Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Headbones Gallery, Toronto, Canada; Fuse Gallery, New York, NY; McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA; Koelsch Gallery, Houston, TX; Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange, CA; The Union Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park, MD; Scope Miami and Scope New York Art Fairs; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD; Arlington Art Center, Arlington, VA; Tag Art Gallery, Nashville, TN; Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD; and the Ellipse Art Center, Arlington, VA. His work is currently in an international traveling group exhibition called "Draw" organized by Fuse Gallery in New York. This is his first solo exhibition at Curator's Office.
Read Andy Moon Wilson's CV