Lunch Time Artist Talks: Mads Moser

My process of making sculpture takes the form of an elaborate dance of dipping, hanging, destroying and reapplying until the work is near completion. By designing an installation, I am taking on the role of a choreographer and architect: I am constantly exploring the different methods of how to instruct human movement by building an environment the viewer has to respond to.

Through large-scale, ephemeral installations made with light, fabric, starch and steel I am creating an environment where I am asking the viewer to consider the collective. I want the viewer to interact however they feel is natural but to acknowledge that when they exist within the installation, their performance may affect those who engage after them. My work is an investigation of how movement is a response to our perception of social ideals, the space that holds us and the bodies that inhabit that space. I am creating these installations in order to investigate how the ways in which people claim space and perform within it relates to their social position and their internalized perceptions that are formed from these constraints. The barriers created by the fabric elicit a response from the viewer and as they interact with the installation, an experiment is born. This installation is a generative experience, one where the viewer may take the time to reflect upon the way in which their body inhabits space and how space can control their movement. There is an element of choice within the created space, one where the viewer can determine how they wish to interact and how deep of a reflection they wish to bring home with them.

I have specifically chosen fabric because of its fundamental relationship to the body and steel for its connection to architecture. I have manipulated the fabric through dipping it in a starch paste and applying it where gravity can take hold. Gravity is a special element within the work: I am completely reliant on it to make the forms of the cloth. However, after the fabric has dried, I have the freedom to take the established form and change it to my whim. One could create metaphors between this and the ways in which society might instruct our individual performance. Ultimately, this work remains abstract and monochromatic to heighten how the viewer’s performance plays an intrinsic role within these commonplace materials becoming an actualized work of art: the installation cannot be art without engagement by the viewer.