INJECTED  VULNERABILITY
Richard H. Ressmeyer—Independent Writer & Curator May 1, 2007

[Analysis in literature and arts is an imprecise pursuit. Strangely, this is an attribute to be savored and enjoyed. Art commentary is confronted by the complication of using language to make explications of visual media.]

Mark Tobin Moore’s new suite of twenty paintings, Bubble Rap, is filled with the juicy enigmas his collectors and curators have come to expect. To label Moore singularly as a mixed-media artist would be to underestimate his reserve of artistic resources. Moore is foremost a social and cultural thinker who designs, through his art, a means to deep personal expression. His strong academic credentials and achievements as a teacher and curator remove him from the sobriquet of outsider artist. Yet, the emotionality, which thankfully includes celebration as well as an activist/contemplation occasionally bursting into anger, fits the description of the visionary artist.

In previous series, Moore has used dark pallets, sometimes inflamed with reds and yellows, bolts, tools, the detritus of pop culture (records and their jackets), military references and equipment, and, for a period, whole doors heavy with symbolic encrustations. Bubble Rap is a new departure. In 2006, Moore took a respite at the beach and brought back a new light and other metaphors: sand, sky, shoreline, stars and islands. And yes, not a small amount of cosmic dark matter.

It is only an inference to describe Moore’s process in sequence: artistic urge, concept, design, material selection, innovative problem solving, and finish. While he follows these steps whether executing his earlier more gritty assemblages, his approach here suggests a more ”painterly” approach than he has used recently. There is a signal of comfort to the gallery visitor in the regular use of 12” x 12” “units” and adherence to the “picture window” of conventional easel paintings. This series is a combination of abstraction employing such techniques as monochromatic fields, pointillism and selective representational depictions of crows in silhouette. Many viewers will find map-like figures, horizon lines between earth and sky, and there is a tornado and a sailboat. And what about the crows? Basic semiotic vocabulary might suggest an ominous interpretation (Poe’s Raven). A less mysterious interpretation, with a biosemiotic bent, identifies the crows as fellow creatures of nature, perhaps perching voyeurs with the advantage of the aerial view.

In his Artist’s Statement Mark Tobin Moore fittingly pays homage to Robert Rauschenberg. His broad art historical consciousness also offers recollections of other artists: John Marin (Top Sail), Charles Prendergast (Summer Carnival), Georges Braque (Back Home—Studio Time), Henri-Edmond Cross (Travel Advisory II), and the rich black passages included in many works here are reminiscent of Loren MacIver’s successful efforts to use black and texture, for works at the same time abstract and representational, in The Window Shade (1948, The Phillips Collection) and Hopscotch (1940, Museum of Modern Art).

Mark Tobin Moore remains dedicated to mixed-media and its variations—collage, assemblage—and all the baggage of the genre: Gnostic and enigmatic metaphor, appropriation, political statements and the most clever of “found art” tool kits. As a mid-career artist he is deserving of a fresh retrospective exhibition. In Bubble Rap he again demonstrates his eclectic range and skills to interest, to comment and to amuse.

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