Questions of opacity and transparency take shape in Moss’s series of recent sculptures…. The torso-like forms bear swaths of paint and written passages culled from US laws regarding rioting. In Consumptive Reader, 1st degree (with Lemon), 2017, a painted tartan pattern is interrupted on one side by the shape of two breasts and, on the other, a book. Through book and breasts we can see a dangling organ in the shape of a lemon. The words “riot in the 1st degree” suggest that the real lemon may in fact be our nation’s laws, in which collective action carries the latent threat of prosecution. Moss’s works are discomforting, if not menacing, in their layering of law and body…. In its rendering, the open book becomes a window into the interior depths of the figure, the book’s spine becoming hers. Moss’s works move beyond surface to confront the interiority of an object or a subject, and the way, as subjects and bodies, we might take up, hold, or give space.
Text by Rebecca Matalon
