exhibition of John Moran
curator: Mika Drozdowska
28.09-18.11.2017
SiC! gallery BWA Wrocław, Poland
John Moran presents the artist’s private narration in which he shows his homeland, America – once a global superpower – in an ironic, satirical context of a new “third world” country. Low economic development, low life expectancy, high rates of poverty, disease, and violence, as well as tumultuous and unstable governments, are factors according to which countries of the Western World used to ascribe the derogatory term to developing countries that required aid. Today, all the criteria seem to fit the situation in the United States. The increasing wealth gap is “low economic development”. Among low-income social groups, such phenomena as low life expectancy, poverty, disease, and violence are commonplace, and the current government can be described as “tumultuous” and “unstable”. Such a system is unstable. And so are John Moran’s works: inspired by both the contemporary and the past, pop culture and politics, they are both humorous and tragic, refined and unkempt.
A Still Life: the double meaning of the title invites us to an uncomfortable, irreverent reality. John Moran’s statuesque, hyperrealistic sculptures conjure images full of symbols deriving from mass media, news bulletins, advertising. We enter the universe of a glass-frozen still life in which the theme revolves around death. The artist also focuses on such topical and historically repetitive issues as social inequality, gender inequality, the refugee crisis, human trafficking, and racism. The other meaning of the title implies that as humans we are not progressing, we are still stuck in the same weaknesses and oppression. John’s naturalistic aesthetic is also influenced by children’s imagination and iconography – the dramatic fate of contemporary children is the inspiration for his creative work. If we add to that all the religious and street symbols he uses, we end up with a shocking blend which the artist uses as a deliberate strategy for pulling us out of passivity and apathy, waking us up from lethargy. A blend intended to arouse a number of contradictory, layered emotional responses. I pull inspiration from everywhere and mash things together, not poetically but aggressively […] into a cohesive and concise mass of wreckage that makes it hard to turn away, says John Sleepy Moran.
graphic design: Łukasz Paluch
producer: Tomasz Cugier
