K.R.M. Mooney, Radial Affordance (c.) i (2022), via Miguel Abreu
On view this winter at Miguel Abreu in New York, artist K.R.M. Mooney marks his debut solo show at the gallery with a body of new works that emphasize the artist’s meticulous interpolations of hardware, construction materials and mechanical parts, applied here in a subtle and engaging series of operations.Â
K.R.M. Mooney, extence (Installation View), via Miguel Abreu
Mooney’s work is particularly notable in its emphasis on structure and infrastructure, studying the connective systems and materials of mechanical processes and then taking these elements towards now modes. Electric and hydraulic circuits operate, interlock, and give rise new behaviors, and conspire to present new processes, or even merely to suggest their possibility. In Outlet (2022), a glass element is shaped after a float valve, a device that measures and manages water levels. As this work reaches out and marks a height level, it suggests a sense of volume and dissolves any sense of quantitative metrics, pointing to the unscalable nature of space in living perception. Outlet makes active the ways in which sensation extends itself in order to perceive space or size. The sculpture enters the gallery space with an embodied memory of tangible volume co-entangled with recollections of peripheral maintenance work. Process, function and work become entangled with memory, time and space, a fascinating study in the lived experience of labor and work, industry and invention.
K.R.M. Mooney, En iv (2022), via Miguel Abreu
In extence, Mooney places on display a series of material encounters, turning mechanics and physics into works that bear the mark of real process, and simultaneously turn these processes back into new objects. Referring to these interactions as “material disputes,†ferrous (containing iron) and non-ferrous compounds turn surfaces into volatile moments of contact with air, with the frictions of creating and the tensions of construction. Oxidation is presented in a similar manner, steel panels in the Housing series (2022) emphasizing this process, displaying the effects of exposure. The rectangular frame, joined together magnetically, provides support and interiority for cast elements that bear traces of pieces of cuttlebone striation (another substance composed of calcium carbonate).
K.R.M. Mooney, Housing (c.) iii (2022), via Miguel Abreu
The utility of tools and objects in Mooney’s composite sculptures supply the works with the ability to connect with their surroundings as well as with human bodies that pass through the gallery space. At the same time, the intrinsic function becomes unfastened through its dormant status, allowing for other forms of engagement to seep in. By abstracting systemic processes and elements, Mooney compresses these networks to meaningful operations, new forms and objects shaped by their own interactions in the world and their collaboration in space and time.
The show is on view through January 5th.
– C. Rhinehart
Read more:
K.R.M. Mooney at Miguel Abreu [Exhibition Site]
