Britt Moseley

"Like a cloud traveling east

I move along.

But sometimes I want to melt into a pile

and drift back

out west

when things had a new presence

without purpose and before I knew"

Three Four Three Four is pleased to present Out West, a solo exhibition by Britt Moseley. Here, the “West” appears as an alternate, illusionary habitat; furnished with the usual, everyday detritus and coupled with varying signifiers.

Moseley’s conjuring can be compared to Jorge Luis Borges’ planetary creations in Tlön, Ubar, Obris Tertius (1961). In his short narrative, Borges portrays a historian who dictates the past of the imaginary planet “Tlön”, a planet that has turned all too real. Borges writes:

"The nations of this planet are congenitally idealist. Their language and the derivations of their language---religion, letters, metaphysics---all presuppose idealism…One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time; it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than a present hope, that the past has no reality other than a present memory…The contact and habit of Tlon have disintegrated this world. Enchanted by its rigor, humanity forgets over and again that it is a rigor of chess masters, not angels."

Out West presents a world much like our own – a pre-Tlön complete with myths, objects, and artifacts, imagined and realized by man. Borges and Moseley do not create an ethos, but rather a possibility for one. The latter’s mysterious “things” teeter between amorphous forms and figurative beings, all situating the viewer in this newly created environment. There is a suggested history that revolves back and forth between two non-distinct places and times. Moseley does not define these experiences for the viewer, but invites them to navigate his imaginary world.

[Excerpts from: Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, (Trans. J.E.I.) New York: New Direction Publishing, 1964, pp. 8-10]

Britt Moseley (b. 1990, Colorado) lives and works in Ridgewood, NY. He received a BFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute in 2012. Recent exhibitions and performances include All Good Children Go To Heaven at Three Four Three Four, Artist as Provocateur at Pratt Institute’s Schafler gallery, Bad Jokes at Silas Marder Gallery, Encountering the Unseen at Phipps Conservatory, and the La MaMa Puppet Slam at La Mama’s Club Theater.