Thomas Moor
Thomas Moor (born 1988 in Aarau, Switzerland) has said that his installations, objects, and performances are about understanding connections. The artist – who began his art studies at the Rocky Mountains College of Art and Design in Denver, Colorado, before studying at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste and Haute Ecole d'Art et de Design in Geneva (HEAD Genève) – works with collected or found materials and existing situations, through which he reveals the often subconscious structures and value systems of our society. In 2012, for example, he performed a search of the Bundesplatz (government square) in Bern with a metal detector as a way of pointing to the fact that the Swiss National Bank stores its gold reserves directly under this much frequented public square, which is also in front of the Bundeshaus [Federal parliament building]. Although here he is referring to the intricacies of Switzerland as a financial center, Moor’s actions often target the art system itself. His series “Equilibrium I-IV” (2014–2016), for example, consists of framed receipts from picture frame manufacturers. And for his slide show “Touching Tangibles,” for which he received the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize, Moor had a skin-tight body suit tailored out of the same white cotton as the gloves used in museums and galleries when moving artworks. Dressed in this bodysuit, he let himself be photographed while embracing sculptures in different Swiss art institutions and collections. In his latest film from 2017, he talked to an artist from Florida who deliberately destroyed a sculpture by Ai Weiwei in the Pérez Art Museum in Miami in protest of the museum not exhibiting enough local artists.
Moor’s work “Climate Control (Museum Haus Konstruktiv)” is also critical of the art world. Prior to his project in the museum, the artist had already briefly placed a thermo-hygrograph – a device that measures the temperature and relative humidity in museums – in several exhibition rooms on previous occasions. For this intervention, he left this somewhat outdated looking device in the Museum Haus Konstruktiv for 14 weeks during the Latifa Echakhch exhibition. On the one hand, the measurements the device that were recorded on paper remind us of the monitors that track our vital signs in hospitals – as if the sheets of paper were documenting whether the vital organs of the museum were still functioning. On the other hand, these measurements could be regarded as remnants of a clandestine performance that Moor says consisted of “the perseverance of a device that pretended to be part of the museum’s inventory.”
Deborah Keller
Moor’s work “Climate Control (Museum Haus Konstruktiv)” is also critical of the art world. Prior to his project in the museum, the artist had already briefly placed a thermo-hygrograph – a device that measures the temperature and relative humidity in museums – in several exhibition rooms on previous occasions. For this intervention, he left this somewhat outdated looking device in the Museum Haus Konstruktiv for 14 weeks during the Latifa Echakhch exhibition. On the one hand, the measurements the device that were recorded on paper remind us of the monitors that track our vital signs in hospitals – as if the sheets of paper were documenting whether the vital organs of the museum were still functioning. On the other hand, these measurements could be regarded as remnants of a clandestine performance that Moor says consisted of “the perseverance of a device that pretended to be part of the museum’s inventory.”
Deborah Keller
Works by Thomas Moor
