Tom Moody - Artwork 2004-6

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Nebula Rorschach Framed

These are older pieces but the framing changes them quite a bit.

- tom moody 1-11-2005 10:00 am [link] [add a comment]



Draft of a written statement about my current work (too wordy for main page).

About the art. Moody’s work is hand-drawn in older paint programs using a mouse or stylus and abused at the printer stage, as in run through multiple times, then cut up and collaged into taped-together patchworks. This method of working goes against the grain of, or "problematizes," the computer (as the '80s theorists used to say) by introducing techniques of painstaking individualized production to an instrument designed for quick, cheap mass production. Instead of succumbing to commercial pressure for state-of-the-art upgrades, the artist moves entropically backward to older, "downgraded" programs. Recurring subjects are the hopeful, jouissant motifs of early Modernism (synthetic cubism, expressionism)--another willful regression that could be mistaken for simple conservatism--combined with the graphic cliches from the early years of computing, such as networks of bulbous molecules and spheroids. Ultimately the subject is not "the machine" but human resistance and choice in the face of the myriad controlled and managed environments of technocracy.


- tom moody 12-15-2004 2:10 am [link] [add a comment]



F-Factor 2 750 wide

F-Factor 2, 2003-4, ink on paper, 54" X 49". Below: 2 details (closeup and super closeup).

Fifties Detail Sony

f-factor 2 detail

- tom moody 10-30-2004 1:25 am [link] [add a comment]



Diptych SSC

"Synthetic Synthetic Cubism"? Yeah, it's a misnomer--Synthetic Cubism was basically late, illustrational Cubism but this current work I'm doing has more in common with the early, incomprehensible Analytical phase. The director of a nonprofit gallery that only shows overtly political work visited the studio a couple of years ago and dismissed pieces of this ilk as "just Kandinsky" (also not Synthetic Cubism, but close enough). I take that as a compliment, since last I heard Mr. K. worked with paint (with all its history and baggage) and these are entirely done with a computer, printer, scissors, and tape. Masquerading as somewhat stylish drawings and paintings, they are simulacra--"robot Kandinsky." Unlike Mike Bidlo and the appropriators, though, I'm not making facsimiles of known early Modernist works. I'm actually still interested in the puzzles of representing a "vortex" or "field." How much does that "pure" field reflect the stamp of the imaging program? Can that programming be circumvented or thwarted? What is inherently "cyber" and what belongs to the pre-technological past? Those are some of the issues here.

SSC (Studio)

- tom moody 10-04-2004 5:12 am [link] [add a comment]



Van Der Graaf Flux

Van Der Graaf Flux Back

Van Der Graaf Flux det.

- tom moody 9-18-2004 9:55 am [link] [add a comment]



Bigbit3

- tom moody 9-01-2004 9:42 am [link] [add a comment]



Abstraction w 2 Centrifuges


Abstraction Detail

- tom moody 8-26-2004 8:43 pm [link] [add a comment]



deviant buckyball back

buckyball arm reverse

- tom moody 8-22-2004 9:47 am [link] [add a comment]



Double Buckyball

- tom moody 8-20-2004 7:15 am [link] [add a comment]



bigbit4

- tom moody 8-16-2004 10:03 am [link] [add a comment]



deviant buckyball w drawings

- tom moody 8-14-2004 4:40 pm [link] [add a comment]

deviant buckyball front

- tom moody 8-14-2004 4:37 pm [link] [add a comment]

deviant buckyball back

Work in progress; the back side of a piece prior to taping. It looks kind of elegant as a drawing.

- tom moody 8-14-2004 4:34 pm [link] [add a comment]



terrazzo

fill abstraction 3

- tom moody 8-14-2004 4:34 pm [link] [add a comment]



MSPaint(brush) Drawings Studio View

Recent drawings, studio installation view.

Larger views of some of the drawings are here (click thumbs for enlarged versions).

- tom moody 8-14-2004 4:33 pm [link] [add a comment]



fill abstraction

- tom moody 8-14-2004 4:31 pm [link] [add a comment]