Charlotte Moth: Seeing while Moving

In her first US solo exhibition, Charlotte Moth (b. 1978, Carshalton, UK, lives and works in Paris) trains her gaze on architecture, the buildings and spaces we occupy, and the mundane objects housed within them. The artist’s collection of analog photographs taken during her travels, which she calls the Travelogue, serves as a source for many of her works in sculpture and installation.

In Noting Thoughts (2011), Moth considers the relationship between image and text, as well as the fragmentary nature of memory itself. This group of tabletop assemblages consists of photographs and short text pieces marked by in-between spaces, absences, and omissions. A new slide work, For Claude Parent and Victor Pasmore (2016), examines the modernist Church of Sainte-Bernadette du Banlay in Nevers, France and the brutalist Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, England, highlighting the buildings’ dramatic singularity. For Study for a 16mm Film(2011), she places a series of mirrors and other reflective objects on top of furniture and films them in a meditation on staging and display. Probing the conditions that influence our perception, Moth makes a metaphorical attempt to peek behind the surface of familiar things.

The large-scale photograms on view are made over an extended exposure period during which the light source is obstructed by bodies that move or carry different objects. The process of making becomes the foundation of the work; the resulting compositions are a product of both chance and deliberation. The sculptures and textile works in the exhibition expand on Boelens’s interest in trace and process. She emphasizes the methodical act of unthreading, or destabilizing, by using a forensic chemical that reveals latent fingerprints on the material. Translating temporality and thought into material form results in works situated at the threshold of abstraction, the inscription of, however fleeting, a moment in time.

Charlotte Moth: Seeing while Moving is curated by Henriette Huldisch, Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center.

Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Jane & Neil Pappalardo, Cynthia & John Reed, and Terry & Rick Stone. Gwenneth Boelens: At Odds is supported as part of the Dutch Culture USA Program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York. Additional support for Gwenneth Boelens: At Odds is also provided by the Mondriaan Fund.

General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Council for the Arts at MIT, the Office of the Associate Provost at MIT, the MIT School of Architecture + Planning, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and many generous individual donors. The Advisory Committee Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged.