ARTISTS
Malcolm Mooney: Can Yoo Doo Right
Schooled in painting and sculpture, Malcolm Mooney adopts various styles from Abstraction to Assemblage. Yet rather than take a rigid approach to any one in particular, Mooney鈥檚 freeform attitude to artmaking possesses a lyricism more closely associated with the rhythms and flows of music. This is perhaps unsurprising given his background as a singer and poet with a knack for improvisation and wordplay, as well as being an artist. It is in this respect that Can Yoo Doo Right also represents Mooney鈥檚 return to the Rhineland, which he first visited in 1968 after Hildegard Schmidt encouraged him to come to Cologne. There he met Irmin Schmidt who was putting together Inner Space, the band Mooney would end up fronting and renaming, Can.
The exhibition features a selection of works that date back to 1970 鈥� the year Mooney returned from Europe to the US 鈥� including several from ongoing series such as Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, Heads Up, and Pages. Across the breadth of his practice, it becomes clear that Mooney works within a continuum of canonical artistic movements that have taken place across continents throughout the latter half of the 20th Century. As the title implies, by showing Mooney in the Schmela Haus, Can Yoo Doo Right hopes to find a rightful place for the artist within an art historical lineage connected to the region.
Schooled in painting and sculpture, Malcolm Mooney adopts various styles from Abstraction to Assemblage. Yet rather than take a rigid approach to any one in particular, Mooney鈥檚 freeform attitude to artmaking possesses a lyricism more closely associated with the rhythms and flows of music. This is perhaps unsurprising given his background as a singer and poet with a knack for improvisation and wordplay, as well as being an artist. It is in this respect that Can Yoo Doo Right also represents Mooney鈥檚 return to the Rhineland, which he first visited in 1968 after Hildegard Schmidt encouraged him to come to Cologne. There he met Irmin Schmidt who was putting together Inner Space, the band Mooney would end up fronting and renaming, Can.
The exhibition features a selection of works that date back to 1970 鈥� the year Mooney returned from Europe to the US 鈥� including several from ongoing series such as Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, Heads Up, and Pages. Across the breadth of his practice, it becomes clear that Mooney works within a continuum of canonical artistic movements that have taken place across continents throughout the latter half of the 20th Century. As the title implies, by showing Mooney in the Schmela Haus, Can Yoo Doo Right hopes to find a rightful place for the artist within an art historical lineage connected to the region.
Artists on show
