Damian Moppett

Vancouver artist Damian Moppett (Canadian, b. 1969) has long been engaged with the processes, materials and history of painting and sculpture, which he uses for the construction of his own vernacular. Drawing equally from modernist formalism, classical figuration, and advertorial photography, Moppett’s practice is an accumulation of strategies that refract and reconsider the story of art history. Frequently alluding to the artist’s studio, Moppett renders the productive process as a subject in its own right. Sometimes a half-finished sculpture is painted as if it were a still life, while elsewhere he imagines what the forgotten work of another artist might look like. He consistently maintains transparency around his influences, often explicitly reappropriating the sculptures of Anthony Caro or the photographs of Dorothea Lange to explore how the historical techniques developed by past artists can be revisited to speak to a contemporary social context. Often, this shift in context is facilitated by a corresponding shift in material: black and white photographs become vivid and even grotesquely coloured paintings, while ancient caryatids translate to flattened silhouettes fashioned from architectural sheet metal. These explorations of previous artistic eras invite us to reflect on the role of art in society, and the web of canonical, mythical, and personal threads that give it meaning.

Moppett holds an MFA from Concordia University, and a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where he has taught for over a decade. He has exhibited in Canada and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Catriona Jeffries Gallery; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Simon Fraser University Gallery, Burnaby; Vancouver Art Gallery Off-site; Rennie Collection, Vancouver; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; and Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia; as well as group exhibitions at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery; Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; White Columns, New York; the Power Plant, Toronto; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland.