NATURE CULT /
May 18 – Jun 26, 2021 /
Opening: Saturday, May 15, 2 – 6pm /
Whitestone Gallery
8/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central
Central, Hong Kong
www.whitestone-gallery.com/exhibitions
Whitestone Gallery Hong Kong is pleased to present NATURE CULT, the first solo exhibition of American artist Donald Moffett in Asia. Coinciding with Art Central Hong Kong, Moffett’s exhibition highlights his recent works characterised by a provocative minimalism, glossy surfaces and uncanny forms exploring subjects on nature, the body and desire. The show at the gallery in H Queen’s will also feature works from across Moffett’s oeuvre, including He Kills Me, 1987; an iconic work by the artist made in New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
In the past two decades Moffett has developed a unique application of paint in which orifices and bristled surfaces invite implications of the human body, botanical and molecular forms, as well as bullet holes. The emergence of this extruded series marked a major shift in Moffett’s work and challenged traditional notions of painting. In Moffett’s recent NATURE CULT series, from which the show borrows its title, the experimentation of paint continues further and addresses the artist’s ongoing investigation into nature and organic forms. His profound preoccupation with nature is rooted in his training in biology and his time spent on a ranch during his childhood. These large, abstract, resin paintings begin as digital renderings of biological shapes which are subsequently milled from wood. The surface of each painting is then coated in multiple layers of resin and paint to achieve its final glossy or matte finish. The resin surfaces interact with the light and environment to reveal shifting colours and an alluring depth of colours. The simultaneously organic and mysterious emblems as imagined in the NATURE CULT series continue to communicate Moffett’s concern towards natural and destructive forces.
Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1955, Donald Moffett currently lives and works in New York, NY and Barksdale, Texas. He has been the subject of important exhibitions at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City and Aspen, Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco, Texas Gallery, Texas, among many others. Moffett’s work is included in major museum collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Museum of Modern art, New York.
