Richard Mosse, b.1980 https://www.richardmosse.com is an Irish artist. I came across his work through his Infra and Enclave. He, like I, was able to travel into Eastern Congo with guides. I was there in about July 1994. The Rwandan civil war, where a lot of bad things happened, was tailing, there were gunshots in the distance, some of our guards subsequently lost their lives. By 2010, the echos of the Rwandan civil war left Eastern Congo a battleground between warlords mining strategic minerals. For his Congo projects, Mosse worked with expired military photographic film Kodak Aerochrome. The film paints the dense green forests as magenta, pink, and sky blue. He exposed images of the landscape, the remnants of war, and his warrior guards. The project, began in 2010 as Infra and subsequently Enclave, a multi channel video work presented at the 2013 Venice Biennale. They were brought by the Portland Art Museum, the first US museum to show the work, in 2014.
Mosse was minted at Goldsmiths, and Yale for his MFA in photography. He immediately began showing at Shainman in New York with Airside and The Fall, themed on aircraft crashes. Later he made images in Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia. One project used infrared video to document refuge flows to Europe, as did Ai Weiwei in a different way.
I would call it conceptual landscape photography. It works with my theory of ingredients in contemporary art. He combines an artist statement-narrative, beauty, with difference - false color, and with the emotions of what humans have done. To be successful they have to balance. He has been criticized for the last ingredient, but I don't think he overuses or misuses it.
His latest project Broken Spectre, and the focus of his talk today, is about Amazon deforestation.
Converge45 guests Richard Mosse for a talk this afternoon at Art Museum's Whitsell Auditorium. https://www.converge45.org/events/a-talk-with-richard-mosse There is no fee to enter the museum for the talk. Portland Art Museum Whitsell Auditorium 2PM Free
