William Turner Gallery presents “Through the Looking Glass,” by Ed Moses. The exhibition celebrates the talented artist and his incredibly productive and successful crescendo to a long, legendary career. The exhibition reveals an artist fully engaged, working in the moment, embracing a career’s worth of stylistic approaches, while incorporating new ones, as Moses boldly entered the labyrinths of the creative process. The works which were created over the last five years, are dramatic in scope and exemplify the breadth of his reach.
Ed Moses, Many Feet, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 86.5″ x 73.5″; Ed Moses, Swiz, 2016, acrylic on canvas 79″ x 74″, courtesy of the artist’s estate and William Turner Gallery.
The title of the exhibition is from Lewis Carroll, one of Moses’s favorite writers, and refers to one of the artist’s fundamental beliefs – that art, at its best, is a portal to the unknown, through which one is transported to magical realms.
Moses did not paint to express; he painted to discover. Restless curiosity was his driving force – chance and circumstance his guiding principles. He was extraordinarily productive, and as he entered his 90s, he showed little signs of slowing down, painting daily, as he had done for decades, outdoors at his Venice studio, and attending numerous exhibitions of his work at various venues throughout the city. Moses was considered one of LA’s most innovative painters, and a central figure in the city’s art scene since first gracing the walls of its legendary Ferus Gallery in 1958.
It has been a year since Ed Moses has passed to the other side of the looking glass. Celebrate the life of this important painter. A 200-page, fully illustrated artist monograph is forthcoming in 2019, and will include critical essays about the artist’s life and work by Richard Davey, Ph.D., author, and Chaplain at Nottingham Trent University, UK; and Thomas Krens, former Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City, and current Senior Advisor for International Affairs.
On view: January 26–March 30, 2019
Where: William Turner Gallery, E-1, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, 90404
Website: http://www.williamturnergallery.com/
