Robert Moeller: A Series of Seditious Portraits with Adjacent Landscapes

Reception: Wednesday, February 1, 5-7pm

Artist Talk: Tuesday, February 21, 11:10-12:00pm, Paul Scott Library

In this recent series of portraits and companion landscapes, Boston-based artist, Robert Moeller, responds to the incendiary events that took place in Washington, D.C. following the 2020 Presidential election.

On January 6^th, 2021, thousands of supporters of then President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building to overturn the results of the presidential election. While this unprecedented event unfolded, President Trump is said to have remained in the White House, watching on television as his supporters violently entered and vandalized the Capitol Building.

A Series of Seditious Portraits with Adjacent Landscapes focuses on the individuals that participated in the January 6^th insurrection. As part of an on-going, larger project, the work in the exhibition focuses on, as Moeller states, “a time where it seemed half of America was at war with science, the rule of law, and an unrelenting pandemic.” The portraits are not depictions of actual individuals. The portraits, while nondescript and intentionally crude, are abstract and fictionalized representations of the interior surfaces of an insurrection and psychic spaces filled with anger and disinformation.  The figures in Moeller’s portraits are intentionally fragmented, half-drawn and brutal. Crushed charcoal is dragged and pushed to shape faces and limbs. Paint tugs at the figures, pulling at them and forcing them to abruptly reconsider their shape in the world.

The portraits are accompanied by kinetic landscapes that propose that the narrative is ongoing and that information, and even reality itself, is disputed. The landscapes are footnotes that are not even remotely pastoral but rather ruinous battlescapes. They follow the portraits with snapshots of erratic emotions and conflict, while subtle areas of green space suggest the possibility of new conversations to be had.