My background is painting and printmaking. I am influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism, and my work is revelatory of internal struggles through disturbing imagery, as the grotesque and carnivalesque is endlessly fascinating. A collage practice followed, as I started using found materials and images, and looked to Duchamp, Hannah Hoch, The Chapman Brothers, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst, and publications like Toilet Paper Magazine.
The Sylphides, Moatzart, Collage
At university, I became focused on deskilling and appropriation art, and started working with found objects. One of my biggest projects was The Toy, where I found the original toy that Damien Hirst modelled “Hymn” after, and reaffirmed it as a toy, by presenting the various ways it could be played with, like a reciprocal ready made (using a Rembrandt as an ironing board).
Mannahymn, from The Toy/ Mannahymn by Moatzart My practice was becoming participatory, as I became interested in Heideggerian ideas about the subject and object, and I was encouraging the public to interact with my work either by stealing it or through becoming part of it. Lastly, I have moved into the terrain of relational art, and have developed “anti-relational” works, where I work with the public to the completion of the work, but present it in a way which goes against the relational aesthetics tradition.
Video from "Print with your Feet" or Terrestrial Paradise by Moatzart
I aim to work more and more with the public, to the production of final objects, for the contemplation of a second viewer (Claire Bishop). I would like for my practice to become more and more socially engaged as it matures, and for my background in fields like painting and printmaking to help in their aestheticization, in the way of socially engaged projects which have an aesthetic and symbolic result, such as the practices of Renzo Martens, Michelangelo Pistoletto, or Serge Attukwei Clottey.
I want Moatzart to be able to encompass other entities and artists in the future, of artwork that might be unnecessarily sidelined, interesting, and forever engrossing, like a seemingly ugly thing that you find you cannot look away from.
The Sylphides I Monotype Single Print by Moatzart, buy here.
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