Governor's Island Art Fair Proposal and Installation

An actual proposal I sent to a museum in South Carolina, with drawings and photos of the recent GIAF Install

Christopher Moss

1979 Bedford Avenue #2

Brooklyn, New York 11225

htp://christophermoss.neoimages.net

646 671 XXXX

Proposal:

The nine drawings and several documentary photographs included in this proposal are examples of how I could alter an exhibition space with a sculptural installation. The work takes imagery and ideas from my paintings and renders them in three dimensions.

The first installation of this work was a part of the Governors Island Art Fair, a yearly event that takes place in an old coast guard barracks on Governors Island, just off the lower tip of Manhattan. The decommissioned operations base was turned over to the people of New York in 2003 and since 2008 has been host to a growing and changing city park, historic landmark and a cultural events destination. Governors Island's designation as New York's newest public park became the core of my installation, a park within a park and an ode to parks everywhere.

More than just an inside-out room the installation provides a different context to situate painting. The sculpture, fence, blue sky and astroturf in the space mimics the depiction of a sculpture in the painting on the wall. Sculpture then becomes a kind of recursive painting, the room becomes a deadpan painting of itself. Other possible iterations of this basic theme can be seen in the 9 drawings I've included in the image portion of this proposal. A future installation would, like the Governors Island piece, take into account it's surroundings as well. It would become an ode to Charleston I suppose, a place I once lived near and visited a number of times.

Artists Statement:

Through my work I attempt to examine the phenomenon of Papa Smurf as a metaphorical interpretation of both John Wesley's paintings and Andalusian sensibilities. What began as a personal journey has translated into images of spinach and toe that resonate with white people to question their own light blueness. My mixed media technique embodies an idiosyncratic view of ________, yet the familiar imagery allows for a connection between Harpo Marx and the Unicorn Tapestries.

Biography:

Christopher Moss is an artist living and working in Flatbush, Brooklyn. He is a recent recipient of a grant from Folsom Prison where he served time for stealing mugs and tie clips from the gift shop of The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Moss has exhibited in group shows at the local Piggly Wiggly and Shaheen Fine Art in Cleveland, Ohio and, more recently, had his first solo exhibition in February of 2011 at the AFA Gallery in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Moss is a regular reader of Artforum, October, Art in America, and Frieze. He graduated with a BFA from Marywood University in 2000 and he received an MFA from CUNY Brooklyn College in 2006. He fancies himself a comedian albeit perhaps a not-very-funny one in the “LOL” sense. His artist statement was written with the help of an artist statement generator he found on the website 10gallon.com, which is to say it's mostly made up but not entirely inaccurate.