Invitations/Privation View ,By Crail Moansburg, street artist.
Raw and amiable at the same time. Club Hang Up: 5 exhibitions, each containing exactly the same collection of works by Crail Moansburg. ( the Hague Holland ). The works are layered with different materials. Hand made from top to bottom. Even the packaging is part of the story the artist is craving to share. He thinks the philosophy of this exhibition is ‘plain to see’, but I considered it a little cryptic.
The latter because he is accustomed to living like a hermit and almost solely devotes himself to his ‘art’. Weeks go by without him engaging in any dialogue whatsoever. This leads to an attractive, mild sort of insanity.
His work is life-saving to him, because it – as he explains – draws away the attention from the clash with his private reality.
In order to get more in touch with the “outside world” in a fashion he could bear or even direct, he sought a muse, a ‘Mata Hari or Anita Berber-like’ character in contemporary society to anchor a new truth, a belief in his fetish claiming Mata Hari to be his mother and keeping a photo of Anita Berber in his pocket as evidence of this. Cryptic or insane? His goal was and still is to paint his muse, thus establishing her existence. This is all about survival.
This approach enabled him to experience ‘meeting’ Mata Hari. The collection of works that ensued from this meeting makes his elusive world tangible for himself.
Living in solitude enables him to look at the world as a disconnected object. As opposed to what Moansburg calls his soul, the earth is less trustworthy. It pains him to see how life is wasted in arrogance and ignorance. He knows his soul is an illusion, but one he treasures nonetheless.
Moansburg calls this conflict of approaching illusions ‘Club Hang Up’ based on the sparse description below:
club
klʌb/
noun
noun: club; an association dedicated to a particular interest or activity.
British
combine with others so as to collect a sum of money for a particular purpose.
hang-up
(hăng′ŭp′)
n. Informal
1. A psychological or emotional difficulty or inhibition.
2. An obstacle to smooth progress or development.
He painted his own little society, 5 times for the audience to contemplate their craving.
I think he sacrifices his life to art. Not because he pretends to be an inspired artist (to pose would really be far from his mark), but because the alternative would be to ‘hang around’ the black hole that he has come to know as his core.
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Artwork Title: Caucho Macho
37 x48 cm
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Artwork Title: Muse
140X230cm
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