SPECIAL GUEST ON 10.15.15 // LAUNCH PARTY & FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION

@ MOEN MASON GALLERY

 

Derek Gores recycles magazines, labels, and assorted found materials to create his collage works on canvas. The series showcases Gores' contrasting interests in the living beauty of the figure, the mechanically angular and abstract design aesthetics of fashion, and a fearless sense of play. Derek was honored to have his work selected for the Manifest Hope DC exhibit coinciding with the Presidential Inauguration in 2009, and was named ‘One of the 40 important artists of the New Contemporary Movement’ while in an exhibit in London in 2010.

 

"I like my pictures to barely come together with teasing little details. The mind can't help but wander, even when trying to focus on one thing. In the collages, some of the little bits I use are deliberate, but i’m after an end result more interesting than I could have planned. One friend calls it a 'Zen Narrative.' "

 

His subjects are fierce figures in a space, influenced by heroes Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Franz Kline, Rube Goldberg, Max Ernst, and, "those great old long-exposure photos of Abraham Lincoln where you can feel the whole minute inside each image. I love that buzzing stillness. I do reference a classic beauty, but made of raw and geometric and un-designed parts, so I feel it's a contemporary beauty too. Key to me is that it is the subject’s strength, for her alone. I'm not interested in conscious concepts- I make something simple and let the elements combine in the head, reacting with each history the viewer brings to the table. When it goes well, I hope to create a real moment, instead of just a picture of a moment."