Andy Moon Wilson: Business
By Kriston Capps
Washington City Paper
March 15, 2007

Andy Moon Wilson is not a guy you want to share a cubicle with: Judging from his doodles, he’d just as likely plant a stapler in your forehead as hand it to you. Violence is a major theme in the artist’s art anomie, but the real business of “Business”—his solo show at Curator’s Office—is an OCD aversion to blank space, whether it be on the back of a business card or behind someone’s eyes. The artist lashes out at corporate culture from an unexpected angle: His scribbles aren’t about conspicuous consumption but rather the way that industry consumes people through the little formal indignities that a polite, handshaking society insists on. Wilson expresses this horror vacui on more than 1,050 business-card canvases, broadcast directly from the id in short-attention-span bursts. There are hobgoblins, battle-axes, and TIE Fighters; weapons ballistic and melee; tentacles, exoskeletons, and any other category of xenomorphia. But architectural abstractions and curious patterned hieroglyphics raise the grade level of the project—which is, in fact, a great deal sharper than much of what passes for comic pop art. The gallery has also helped by installing Wilson’s work in seven zones, each a different theme and distinguished by the shade of the wall (painted in variations of office-space manila). The viewer gets the sense that Wilson needs assistance: not necessarily psychiatric care but at least a helping hand to walk him through it all. His work isn’t juvenile; it’s innocent: Some people just aren’t cut out for toasting to the boss and smiling insincerely. But Wilson isn’t wallowing in it—instead, he’s having his revenge.

The exhibition is on view from noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, to Saturday, April 7, at Curator’s Office, 1515 14th St. NW. Free. (202) 387-1008.