101.6 x 152.4 cm
Marianne Boesky Gallery is delighted to present Donald Moffett's show Aluminum / White House Unmoored, 2004 at our Aspen gallery this summer. Aluminum / White House Unmoored is the central work from Moffett's D.C. series, in which the artist projected handheld video of the capital's landmarks and symbols onto silver extruded oil painting-in this case, a flickering disembodied seat of ultimate power. Here, the White House's familiar image takes on a haunting presence and surveillance-like appearance as it comes in and out of focus on the canvas. From the 1980s onward, Moffett emerged as a pioneering voice of art and activism, responding to the AIDS crisis with seminal works like He Kills Me (1987) and Call the White House (1990).
New York-based artist Donald Moffett (b. 1955; San Antonio, TX, United States) emerged as both an artist and activist in the late 1980s, participating in the ACT UP movement and as a founding member of the collective Gran Fury. Dedicated to abstraction and the monochrome, Moffett challenges the traditional flat frame through non-traditional painting techniques, employing a private language of form that serves as a carrier for both personal and political meaning. Moffett often treats the canvas as a surrogate for the body, creating orifices by cutting and flaying or perforating the canvas. The resulting compositions are provocative and poetic, hinting at playfulness, all the while serving as an implicit form of social critique.
