Andy Moon Wilson Commentary

The Drawers - Andy Moon Wilson Commentary written by Andrea Pollan

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Raucous and pulling no punches, Andy Moon Wilson's drawings have been attracting much attention across the United States due partially to the masterful drawing expertise that he brings to his work and partially to their raging adolescent content. A non-stop drawing machine, Moon Wilson states, “I am compelled to draw almost without cessation. Whenever I am not actively drawing, I am thinking about drawing. Drawing is the spigot from which my thoughts flow. The drawings themselves are artifacts of the moment in time in which they were made. They are a documentation of my particular state of mind, my concerns, preoccupations and attitude at that moment.”

The artist cites visual influences as diverse as gothic architecture, Persian carpet design, modernist decorative motifs, industrial design, T-shirt and CD cover graphics, and obsessive drawings done by both historic and outsider artists. For Moon Wilson, “Everything is an influence. Every response to stimuli registered by my consciousness since birth has influenced who I am as a person, and therefore influences my work.” Both highbrow and lowbrow, Moon Wilson's aesthetic is also formed by theories and histories of international ornament and design, cartooning, politics, war, macho weaponry, car culture, binge drinking, loner/loser culture, private ranting, and random provocative crazy shit.

Hi various bodies of work include tiny drawings done on mixed media and placed in Baggies. These provide a drug-like “fix” of punchy art to an avid art fan or collector. Another installation of small-scaled drawings is “The Dude Project,” in which the artist drew on hundreds of archival post-it notes and installed them in the bathroom of Curator's Office space at the Scope Miami art fair in 2005. He is currently at work on several thousand intricate business card drawings that focus on corporate and personal identity.

Larger works are mesmerizingly complex and feature a blend of obsessive pictorialism, cryptic formulae, nano-architecture, and the occasional appearances of his loser dude protagonists. Moon Wilson calls these intricate works “meditations on architecture, ornament and craftsmanship.” These are done on office-size 11” x 8.5” paper to allude to an employee goofing off at work, albeit with extreme horror-vacui results.