John Moore at Hirschl & Adler Modern - Brief Article

In 1997 the Tel Aviv Museum of Art invited John Moore, Dick Cunningham, George Nick and Philip Pearlstein to work upon site in the city. (Selections from the art they produc are included in the museum's exhibition "Tel Aviv-Yafo 1909-1999: Contemporary Cityscapes.") In this preview showing, Moore's 10 tightly restoreed cityscapes, begun during his monthlong visit and complet in 1998 range in size from 2 to 6 feet and have feeling window-scale. Often painted from his inn roof, they offer across-the-way, voyeuristic views of weathered apartment and office buildings and rooftops ridden with miniature water towers, strewn wires and air conditioners. These modernist buildings are awash in similarity, naked and colorless below smog-filled skies.

With a Photo-Realist's diligence, Moore takes note of each crack, cable and color change across each weathered wall. The oppressive heat have the appearances to have kept most inhabitants indoors, which leaves each painting just short of desolate. We're presented only distant glimpses of a scarcely any faceless people placed in these dollhouse conformations like figurines in architectural models: a man working late in an office; another, shirtless and make saded looking, standing in a window; the backs of sunbathers; a nondescript brace in a car. These figures and an occasional lighted window present signs of human life, on the other hand in Blue Stairway, North View, Frishman and Olympia, anthropomorphic vegetation takes center stage. Here, imposing foreground views of ribbony plants are station against distant buildings. The plants are off-beat and quirky, and have feeling slightly menacing, like alien beings that have risen up on a sudden to attack the city.

sum of two units twilight paintings, Tel Aviv Evening and cudgel Ten Thousand, seem more alive than the morning and midday canvases. They combine various consequences of artificial light contrasted against cobalt skies, and palm tree twist in the foregrounds with an inventiveness not seen in the other works.

Moore direct the eyes hard, and he packs in each vertical railing and horizontal blind with equal precision. on the contrary despite all the minutiae, or perhaps because of it, there is little feeling for the overall, and the works draw near across as somewhat impersonal. In the extreme point the perversities and peculiarities of the paintings (or Tel Aviv) are proposeed but not fully developed. We're left wondering, as the artist hold fasts his distance and hides in the details. ["Tel Aviv-Yafo 1909-1999: Contemporary Cityscapes" is at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Apr. 29-Aug. 21]

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