Our Pick of the Week is “Moses@90″….presented by the William Turner Gallery. Time to celebrate the birthday and legacy of a true art legend, Ed Moses.

His career, which spans over six decades is an idyllic example of a working artist living life to his fullest. Moses has never missed a beat, allowing his creative flow to blossom throughout his life. He is consistently out and about – at art events – amongst art lovers and his fans. This event is NOT to be missed. We must cherish the time we have with the great Ed Moses and revel in his talent, as he is one-of-a kind.  I had the honor of getting to know Ed a few years back, while I was interviewing him for an article in the Santa Monica Mirror. As time goes on, his art continues to evolve and mutate (as he would say), and we are all so very glad for that – HAPPY BIRTHDAY ED!!

Ed Moses in his Venice studio (2016) Photo by Rob Brander

“Moses@90” features will extend beyond the parameters of the William Turner Gallery and into another gallery (the former Santa Monica Museum of Art building at Bergamot Station), honoring his immense body of work.

Here is some additional info from the gallery:
On the occasion of Moses’ 90th birthday, the exhibition will celebrate the varied and prolific career of this indelible Los Angeles art world fixture. A painter and “mutator”, whose allegiances have been to tireless experimentation rather than to the tenets of any one movement, Ed Moses has been honing a distinct visual vocabulary for over 60 years, obsessively mining the possibilities of abstraction. At 90, Moses continues his dogged search for the elusive metaphysical power of painting, creating works that are about the expression of temporality, process and presence, beyond the physical limitations of surface.
 
The exhibition will survey works spanning the entirety of Moses’ career, including a selection of never before seen paintings. Earliest examples include meticulous architecturally inspired drawings from the 50s, the well-known Rose and patterned graphite drawings from the 1960s and 70s, cross hatch and screen paintings, looser gestural paintings from the 1990s, and more recent works that include the craquelure and mirror paintings. The restless energy with which Moses has borrowed from pre-existing formal vocabularies and adapted their morphologies to make them his own, attest to the mutable nature of his vision.

A self-described “mark maker,” his concerns exceed formal ones and slip easily into philosophical and anthropological spaces. He has described his own process as a shamanistic offering, a self-assertion and proof of existence left for posterity to the “tribe”; a primitive desire to leave one’s mark. Above all else, the work is about the process of making, and the fragile reconciliation of chaos and control it requires. In Moses’ own words: “The point is not to be in control, but to be in tune.”
 
See image: Scratch Up, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 72″x60″

What: Opening reception
Where: William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave, E1, SM
When: 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Phone: 310 453 0909
Website: http://www.williamturnergallery.com/