Interview with artist Randy Moore, pt. 1
Base partner Geoff Cook first met artist Randy Moore over a decade ago when Moore was helping out at the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco. Soon after, Moore moved to New York City and the two struck up a friendship. Cook and his partners in Base soon became avid collectors of his work and enthusiastic supporters of his efforts, designing a catalog for his show at Sperone Westwater and sponsoring his performance piece, “Death Drive,” a 78.1 mile bicycle ride through the heart of Death Valley. Moore’s work, which varies as much in subject as it does in the media used to make it, may be pop on top, but always carries with it a firm conceptual backbone.
Base: Where are you from?
Randy Moore: California… all of California. Monterey to San Luis Obispo to San Francisco.
B: San Francisco being when you went to school?
RM: Yea… when I went to SFAI.
B: What was SFAI like at that time?
RM: It was much smaller than what it is today. They weren’t having a money meltdown and just letting in any 18 year old like they are now. It was more about people with life experiences than just about people who could pay the tuitiion. Our total class size was about 500 people and included Barry McGee, Jason Rhoades. It was an interesting time.
B: Why was it an interesting time to be in San Francisco?
RM: Honestly, I don’t know if it was an interesting time in general. But for me, coming from a small town, it was. Back then nobody thought you could make art as a career. You could teach, but that was about it. So people went there to pursue something but perhaps didn’t know exactly what. There weren’t any young artists who we could use as references. There was the Neo-Geo artist movement with Jeff Koons, but that was really about it. No one was thinking about going into art to make money.
B: What did you do after school?
RM: Started doing my own work. Worked odd jobs a day or two a week…
B: But always linked to art?
RM: Yea. Installing art, in a museum, collections… whatever to pay the bills. Rent back then was, like, $250. That was SF pre-dot com. Everything was still cheap. In the early 90’s, the economy wasn’t that great, either.
B: What was your first body of work? What was your starting point?
RM: When you get out of school, you want to unlearn everything that you’ve learned. I needed a starting point. I questioned everything I’d ever learned. Language became important. The formation of personal identities, either through cultural or autobiographical experiences was of particular interest. I began to question the basic notions of the cultural we’re brought into and our systems of beliefs, especially popular psychology such as Freud. It was at this time that I started using Wrigley’s chewed gum in my work. This was related to Freud’s psycho-sexual stages of development, oral being the mouth, anal being the waste product…
B: The waste product?
RM: Yea, gum is basically a polimer with flavor and sugar, all of which becomes waste. There was also personal reason I used Wrigley’s. At that time, Wrigley’s used twins in their ads. Remember “Double your pleasure?” Well, my mom was a twin, so I always found the notion of twins in pop culture fascinating. Perhaps a sort of Oedipus complex…
B: You often reference popular culture in your work.
RM: Yea. In the case of Wrigley’s, it’s a mass produced product that is easily consumable and available to everybody.
B: What did these gum pieces look like?
RM: At the time, I was thinking about the construction of an identity with what we were first given: a name. Many of these early pieces therefore utilized my name, “Randy.” I was wondering if a name predisposes a person to any personality traits or phonetic dispositions. Also, the gum is related to oral language in that it’s formed in the mouth.
B: And about what year was that?
RM: 1990-1994.
B: And that was about the time you were working at the John Berggruen Gallery?
RM: Very loosely… about a day a week.
B: So those gum pieces related to your name were the first body of work… then?
RM: That led to the Robin series.
B: “Robin” as in “Batman and Robin?”
RM: Yea. “R” was the first letter of my name. Cartoons are a great way of socializing kids, and Batman and Robin in particular is a moralistic tale that teaches good vs evil in very simplistic terms. On a different level, the work was about role playing, trying masks. These characters are identities we try on as kids.
B: You once said to me, that the periods of your work reflect the periods of your own life?
RM: It relates to Freud in relation to my own development. Gum was oral, anal and the phallus… three phases of Freud. After that is latency. The Robin work falls there. Role playing, the mask. Exploring other identities while burying your own. Or! Perhaps how putting on a mask allows you to bring out another identity. There are a lot of possibilities about how to read the work. Masks have been used throughout history. Like Halloween, which is sort of a sanctioned break with life’s everyday realities where one gets to act out latent impulses.
B: There was one piece that everyone remembers in particular…
RM: The suicide video? Robin’s leap into the void from SF MoMA’s catwalk?
B: What was that about?
RM: Besides the art historical reference, it was a way to put an end to the Robin character. It was a way to kill off adolescene, a way to move into Freud’s genital stage.
B: Meaning?
RM: When you turn the R on Robin’s chest upside down, it mutates into the playboy symbol.
Stay tuned next week for part 2 of this interview.
For more information on Randy Moore and his work, contact the Sprovieri Gallery, London.
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