Biography
K.R.M. Mooney is a subtle materialist. Like a chemist of sorts, his work focuses on the way materials and forms interact and impact one another. Grounded in a deep knowledge of materials and processes, his practice occupies an intermediary position between abstract, autonomous, and site-specific sculpture, a type of sculpture in which an acute concern for tactility, connectivity, and space constitutes a centrifugal force. Mooney’s objects distill the observable and imperceptible properties of organic and industrial materials, investigating structural capacities and potentials as well as the effects of time, temperature, and adjacency.
In a Mooney exhibition, every surface, wall, and flooring element is engaged in some way and accounted for. The volume of a space is sensed through its architectural details and environmental conditions. In centering the relationships between reified functions embedded in the building and the navigable, tactile extensities, his sculptures suggest a shifting model of space, whereby space is at once directed, sensed and measured by object-human interactions. Money’s works exist as structures of support and interdependence.
The artist’s use of electroplated steel, calcium carbonate, and substances in various forms draws out affinities between discrete objects. The compounds and elements become a node in the networked modes of material behaviors. By emphasizing the gallery floor, for instance, the very basis of the architectural interior and the physical support of many of his works, Mooney subverts the assumed invisibility and auxiliary role of the ground, embracing it in a gesture of long-lasting care.
K.R.M. Mooney (b. 1990, Seattle, WA) lives and works in New York. He studied art at Central Saint Martins, London and California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Mooney’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Konrad Fischer Galerie, Berlin (2021), Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco (2019), Kunstverein Braunschweig (2017), and as part of the SECA Art Awards at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2017), Pied-à-terre, Ottsville, PA (2015), and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2015). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2022), Braunsfelder, Cologne (2022), Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York (2021), the ICA, Los Angeles (2021), Yale Union, Portland (2020), Stadtgalerie Bern (2020), SculptureCenter, New York (2020), Fondation D’entreprise Ricard, Paris (2017), and Kunst-Werke Berlin (2017), White Flag Project Library, St. Louis (2016), Futura Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague (2016), and Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco (2016), among others.
extence, the artist’s first solo exhibition with Miguel Abreu Gallery, was on view at 36 Orchard Street during winter 2022/2023. He will be the subject of two solo exhibitions, forthcoming in 2023, at Progetto, Lecce, Italy and Midway Contemporary, Minneapolis.