Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller

Zeke Moores
Dumpster

2010

About the Item

By Terence Sharpe Attacking the medium of sculpture from a position of almost anti-fine art clarity, Zeke Moores alters conceptions of how we relate to material and form. There is an appreciation of medium in his work that bears the transparency of a skill set routed in fabrication and foundry that questions the social significance of his objects. There is very deliberate re-imagining that takes place when one encounters these objects. The function and form of each work alters its original stake in our economy. Each work takes on a different cultural significance in an attempt to harness the means of production and question our relation to everyday materials. Observing works like Construction Grade (2008) and Sign (2013) draws attention to the carving of grain textures resembling woodwork. These cast aluminium structures command the space they inhabit, imposing their dead weight on the viewer in a visceral manner. Their strength and almost ominous disposition become displaced upon closer inspection. It is a form of sensory disorientation to observe patterns resembling wood engraved into these steel slabs, one expects the smell of sawdust but is met with the cold vision of metal. There is a sense of nervousness that comes with this realization, expectations are thrown and a peculiar attempt at recognition leads to a reassessment of what materiality is. Often a sense of home comes with the symbol of a blanket. But in the hands of Moores this object must be approached with trepidation. Once again cast aluminium undermines the viewers’ sense of structure, weight and density and the senses are obfuscated in a manner that creates unease. Blanket (2013) offers the viewer and object of luxury but mechanizes it as threatening, its soft contours assume menace to the point of confrontation. Our items of grandeur in our homes have been circumvented, we question how our possessions are made, by what and who by – we realize we are consumers of artisanal violence with no sense of wrongdoing and succumb to our positions as nodes in networks of international force-fed styles and the serial homogenization of fractal-based reproduction units. Dumpster (2010) creates an abject structure of glory that reflects its surroundings with a sheen of glamour further aestheticizing disorientation. As one gazes into the shimmering abstract reflections on this sculpture, there is a distinct visual coda to the reflexive, uncanny miasma that emanates from the other works. In a hyper-real spectacle of bling, the dumpster, a home for waste, signifies the waste of those who contribute to its insides. Its original function has been subdued. It can no longer serve its purpose. Under interrogation, the works have renounced their autonomy, much like their consumers. The works in this exhibition allude to our complicit behaviour in the means of production. Once the disruption of the senses subsides, the cold realization that we yearn for a critical separation is dulled by the banal psychopathologies that lead us back into circulation.
  • Creator:
    Zeke Moores (1977, Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2010
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 54 in (137.16 cm)Width: 84 in (213.36 cm)Depth: 38 in (96.52 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Montreal, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU476833613
More From This SellerView All
  • Oblivion (Dead Astronaut #2)
    By Brandon Vickerd
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Purposely diverse, my work straddles the line between high and low culture, acting as a catalyst for critical thought and addressing the failed promise of a modernist future predicated on boundless scientific advancement. Whether through craftsmanship, the creation of spectacle, or humour, my goal is to provoke the viewer into questioning the dominate myth of progress ingrained in Western world views. A satellite resting lifeless in a crater, recalling a modern day Icarus whose faith in technology lead to hubris and imminent demise as he fell back to earth; a ghost clad in chrome, cloaked in the reflective guise of the machine it seems fit to haunt; machines sporting deer antlers and locked in never ending combat – these are just some of the motifs I utilize to articulate my concerns about technology and failure. Elements of this work appear as wonderfully crude relics of past visions of the future, as vehicles or potential doomsday weapons mirroring the excesses of the cold war and the space race, while also recalling proto-modernist sculpture of the same period. I attempt to highlight our nostalgia for a past, when science held the promise of a limitless future, and not the very strange and often frightening world of tomorrow we find ourselves living in today. My work is a lexicon of no-longer-relevant representation created with a critical eye towards modernism, but also empathy for a tarnished idealism. In the past several years my exhibited projects have been diverse in form and content, including site specific interventions, kinetic sculpture, public performances and object based sculpture. My public installations deliberately do not reveal themselves as sculpture, but seek to insert an anomaly into the viewer’s experience of the everyday. Projects such as Northern Satellite trigger a discourse centered on our conflicting ways of understanding landscape by creating a narrative where a Global Positioning Satellite has collided with the earth. In gallery exhibitions I engage the audience through employing the language of monumental figurative sculpture by subverting dominant cultural narratives by creating monuments to popular culture characters (Dead Astronaut...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Cranium
    By Brandon Vickerd
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    The sculpture Cranium (2020) is an exploration of consciousness in isolation. It re-imagines the human skull as an ever-expanding container, complete with its own internalized logic...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze, Steel

  • Buckets
    By Zeke Moores
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Heavily influenced by his extensive background in fabrication, blacksmithing and foundry; Moores’ work is preoccupied by the cultural significance and hierarchical systems of value t...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Marx (bubblewrap)
    By Brandon Vickerd
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    I am interested in how we collectively construct history through artifacts such as monuments and portrait bust. These devices are tools for constructing dominant historical narrativ...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Coeur de plume
    By Jean-Robert Drouillard
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Jean-Robert Drouillard’s practice has its genesis in a background of studies in literature and writing. He is a member of the artist collective la Coop Le Bloc5, an artist-run collec...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Stack #1
    By Zeke Moores
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Born and raised in Conception Bay South, Newfoundland, Zeke Moores has received numerous grants and awards, and has exhibited nationally and internationally at such institutions as t...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Metal, Bronze

You May Also Like
  • Love (5/18) - Solid Bronze Whale Sculpture
    By Mireia Serra
    Located in Los Angeles, CA
    Mireia Serra creates sensuous bronze and iron sculptures showing the beauty of snapshots caught in life which are full of emotions and feelings along the life journey. Her metal artw...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Metal, Bronze, Iron

  • WHITE HINGED POEM DRESS,
    By Lesley Dill
    Located in New York, NY
    LESLEY DILL WHITE HINGED POEM DRESS, 1994 patinated bronze 55 x 37 x 30 in. 139.7 x 94 x 76.2 cm. Edition of 4
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Growing in a Fragmented Landscape
    By Jennyfer Stratman
    Located in Los Angeles, CA
    There is a metaphorical interplay between the natural imagery international artist, Jennyfer Stratman, uses and its multiple meanings. While the human figure features strongly, it is...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Metal, Bronze, Enamel, Steel, Copper

  • Cefiro - Renaissance Inspired Bronze Sculpture of an Acrobat set on Tall Stand
    By Jesus Curia Perez
    Located in Chicago, IL
    Cefiro is derived from the Spanish word for Zephyr, meaning a soft gentle wind which brings spring to the Mediterranean. The word also depicts beauty and playfulness. This figure p...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze, Steel

  • The Gardener with Sunflower
    By Patrick O'Reilly
    Located in Belfast, GB
    Patrick O'Reilly The Gardener with Sunflower Bronze 47 1/4 x 49 1/4 x 15 3/4 in 120 x 125 x 40 cm This piece is entitled The Gardener with Sunflower. It is a large scale outdoor scu...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

  • Conversation (B/02/01)
    By Sophie Ryder
    Located in Montreal, Quebec
    Ed. of 9 Sophie Ryder was born in London in 1963 and lives in the heart of the Gloucestershire countryside with her family. She studied visual arts at the Royal Academy Schools and ...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Figurative Sculptures

    Materials

    Bronze

Recently Viewed

View All