MOER by Matthew Michael & MOER group exhibition

Opening at 18:00 on the 22nd of October at KLûK CGDT, the curated group exhibition MOER features established and emerging contemporary South African artists, whereby the theme takes the slipway of language as a causeway for inquiry.

How the shape of us can be characterised by that which we wear, lounge on, walk through, listen to, or those whom we talk with, argue about and care for. Material memorises movement as abstracted forms secure alphabets, figurative functions flutter, sculptural scenarios seduce and performance preserves. Each participating artist invites us to interpret how the shape of that which surrounds us, whether digital, verbal, familiar, mechanical, audible, colloquial or spectacle, invites semantic instability or cultural familiarity. Societal structures surround us through linguistic slippages such as the Afrikaans term ‘moer’, sometimes, we must interject to allocate something unexpectedly new.

Matthew Michael is an artist and curator who queers situations, scenarios and semantics by transgressing heteronormative expectations. Familiar functions of utilitarian roles become imbued with embodied ornamental significance, embracing emotional calibration through the physicality of intended purpose.

MOER reorients industrial geometry, mechanised iconography, and unconventional methods of ornamentation by designating functionality as a means of embellishment. As an extension of his practice, object-oriented ontology grafts an understanding of how material ecology may become a pit strategy in reclaiming domestic memory. Whilst material traces reference innate commercial autonomy, the imposed affective reconfiguration foregrounds sensory and embodied engagement over instrumental use, from a predetermined purpose toward a phenomenological encounter. As we repurpose the planet’s ore to produce tools of the trade, minerals remain as grounding principles to store that which we cannot physically carry. Here, MOER aims to reunite them on the body and return them as neighbours.

Open to the public to attend.