Operating between the optic and the haptic (the visual and the tactile), Moss’s voluminous, transparent sculptural objects reflect and embody her interest in the commonplace conventions and faculties of daily life, as well as the superstructures that inflect those conventions and faculties. Carved and shaped, Moss creates clear sculptures that act as a multilevel container for painting and texts. Moss likens the viewer’s relationship to them as similar to that of “a person wearing a sweatshirt”—confronting the viewer with both a figure as a spatial proposition, as well as a textual announcement.
Moss describes the new series of hand-carved “L”-shaped sculptures within Gray Mandates as “brackets, arrows, corners, ‘L’s, depending on how they’re exhibited.” Completely modular along all axes, their mutability is core to their function. They can be stacked, nested or hung in any direction, making them building blocks.
The importance of textual elements within Moss’s overall practice is paramount. Those within Gray Mandates are culled from official U.S statutory descriptors for such conceptual and physical entities as ‘Object, ’Site,’ ‘Structure,’ ‘Museum,’ ‘Building,’ and ‘District.’ At once humorous and discomforting, they allow an investigation of the excesses that occur in attempting to move from theory to practice, and illuminate the gaps that occur when cultural or societal constructs attempt to encompass the desires of their constituents.
