By the time he died in 2018, Ed Moses was widely considered one of the most fundamentally “West Coast” artists in America. A Los Angeles native, Moses studied at UCLA before travelling briefly to New York in the late 1950s; there, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Willem De Kooning and Mark Rothko before returning to LA to transplant postwar abstract expressionism into Southern California. Among other artists such as Larry Bell and Ed Ruscha, Moses would help shape the local art scene for the next 60 years and would form the kernel of a group of California artists known as the “Cool School”, collectively offering a rejoinder to the then New York-centric nucleus of the American contemporary art world. Back then, most of the artists converged around a small but influential gallery on La Cienega Boulevard called the Ferus Gallery; today, Moses’ work numbers among the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Art Institute Of Chicago, MoMA, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum in New York.
A self-described “mutator” whose style constantly evolved and co-opted new influences, Moses’ work is difficult to describe in anything other than broad terms, but one constant was that he had an enduring fascination with “mark-making” and the physical process of painting. In the works shown at JD Malat Gallery, chaotic swirls and stains of different colours meld on large canvases which, despite their obvious abstraction, can’t help but spur comparisons to waterfalls or other natural phenomena.
Engaging and absorbing, Moses’ work will make for a beautifully escapist experience for viewers. And, given the current situation and lockdown rules, would-be visitors to the gallery don’t need to leave home to see the art; while gallery manager Annie Pereira explains in the behind-the-scenes video that Moses’ canvases (like most traditional artistic media) have the greatest impact in person, the entire exhibition is available in virtual form online.
