2023 | Campus Gallery | College of Visual & Performing Arts

Exhibitions

Poetic Variations: Anatomy of a Process | Monoprints by Denny Moers

November 21, 2023 - January 27, 2024 | UMass Dartmouth CVPA Campus Gallery

Reception: Thursday, November 30, 2023, 5-7 pm, Artist Talk 6 pm
Closing Reception: Thursday, January 25, 5-7 pm
Location: CVPA Campus Gallery at 285 Old Westport Road in Dartmouth, MA 02747

In the exhibition titled "Poetic Variations; Anatomy of a Process," artist Denny Moers invites us into his imaginative world. We know it is based on reality; there is a negative of the landscape that the artist chose to photograph during one of his road trip expeditions in search of inspiring subjects. But there are so many other layers of interpretations that are interwoven into the final image. How did he arrive at that precise point? Moers has said,”I search for subjects visible to anyone; my task is to see what I haven’t felt before and capture what I cannot possess”. Moers photographs to see and reflect upon what otherwise remains veiled from ordinary perception.

That's the role of art, to reveal the hidden, to render emotions tangible, to capture fleeting fragments of poetry and to transform them into images. Yet for Moers, the black and white negative is merely the beginning of his artistic journey. As a seasoned darkroom printer who served as Aaron Siskind's first printer and assistant upon relocating to Rhode Island from Rochester, NY, in the 1980s, he takes the negative as a template for his alchemy. Music fills the background, chemicals mix on the wet photo paper, add drama or silence, and conjure hues of reds, blues, and browns.

This darkroom process is unique not only for this artist, but for each of these ephemeral moments when his monoprints come to life by light fogging, applying chemicals from spray bottles and powdered crystals, by observing transformations, and finally fixing the image. Time, chance, and the instinct of a trained eye converge, giving rise to variations that embody different moods and feelings. These differences presented in this exhibition serve as a reminder that our visible world holds more than a single interpretation, that there might be different truths, influenced by both our internal landscape and the artistry unfolding within Denny Moers' darkroom. The poet Robert Creeley, in an essay on Moers’ exhibition at the University of Buffalo wrote: “You know it but you hadn’t thought to–that’s it but how did it get here…”

Brush with Prairie Field I, Print ‘B’, 1996, 9x7

Brush with Prairie Field I, Print ‘C’, 1996, 9x7

About Denny Moers

Denny Moers' photographic monoprints have been exhibited widely and are included in over 30 public collections throughout the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City. His artwork has been used for numerous book covers including covers for the writers Robert Creeley, CD Wright, Denise Levertov and James Galvin. His collaboration with CD Wright culminated in the book, ‘Casting Deep Shade’, published by Copper Canyon Press with a companion documentary film, by David H Wells exploring Denny Moers’ life’s work.

Denny Moers received his MFA from the Visual Studies Workshop. He worked with generations of photography students as a faculty at Roger Williams University, University of Rhode Island, Babson College and others.