Robert Moore

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Recent Exhibit 
"SYSTEMS"

Libidinal Ritual of the Equinox

Blue shirt/support belt-start music-set up barrio-take in stuff-roll out drawing-pause-move gingerly-this time privacy and quietness of movements-walled off-fenced off-minimal gestures-slow and methodical-opposite of rabbit-much slower than bass line-take off belt, shirt-hang shirt on barrier-put on bra-find tea cups-mindful of soundtrack-put on speaking-hat-remove bra, put on shirt, write with string-step over rope dust rabbit use glove-write name w/pink string wearing the four shirts for the 4th time white boy blue has been performed-repeat-set up sleeping bag-candlestick w/top-put on gear-shorts-pull teacups out of bra lifting robe-push crawl under/around barrier-line up cups next to candlestick-ghee from top into cups-wicks out of ears-soak-light-takeoff gear including penis-began last song-write w/white cloth-put shorts on diablo
Fall Equinox ' 06

Male N Female Play

Life cycles play male n female
Male N Female Play
Life cycles – pulsing – blood in veins,
air out lungs, signal across nerves. Rhythm
energy, balance – routine, ritual, patterns –
upheaval, loss, trauma. Do we cope – pain
grief, change? Discover, understand, transform –
self. Push on – restore order and rhythm or pull
back – insulate, protect.

My performance is a reordering, rearranging,
a transforming of the installation.
- Bundle the constant flow of anxious energy,

Are we wearing our ancestors' skin - telling their tale?
I see a link from Lascaux to Giotto to Twombly.
I paint, sew, hang, lean, write, glue, record, listen,
examine, analyze, over-analyze - installations germinate.
The imagery is humble, intuitive, and pure - circles,
squares, words, shapes, foliage, beehives, and bees.
Add objects - intimate and potent talismans - some
older then me - the drinking glass, soft ball, tattered
flannel sleeping bag cloth - and some are digital; boombox,
angry message answering machine.

Installations enhanced with performance and sound
engulf me - and want to record (explore)the experience
deeper(journal)found raw material - floorplans, deep
thought, false starts(revisions), collaged printed nonsense.
These crude manuscripts guide my performances and are
then placed on emptied shelves - open books.

My anxiety riddled rituals invoke superstitious hallucinatory
down and dirty southern charm, listen - blues chords, preachers
sermon, screams of children and hysterical women, "…'cause
he's a crazy man I said he was so he is a crazy man, I said he was,
and…" - a humming pulsation.

mass and energy are interchangeable

Fading away
Burning up

To slow your life
Down, you must
Slow yourself down

Flannel shirt for lungs…hand-me down…liver & heart from red couch cover…strips of sleeping bag hang…flawed skin

And days continue and some we don’t
Remember and days continue and days continue
And days continue and things
Happen and days continue and
We are ourselves and we change
Or we stay the same and we
Are like everyone and we are
One thing not part of one
Thing but one thing

Exfoliation

He's in the shower, exfoliating. His present lover read in a magazine - you know the ones
for women that have the same articles every month on how to satisfy your man and shit like that - that unless you exfoliate the bacteria will back up into your body. This sounds like serious business. He's taking a long time. What is exfoliating? Ex's, he knows. He has about five hundred pounds of ex's. The first one was about normal weight, the second a little smaller than normal, and the last was huge. Must be why she was the hardest to make an ex. Foliate means something having leaves. What does that have to do with a shower and scrubbing your skin down? He doesn't know.
Breaking up is not easy. He's tried rising, scrubbing, dissolving, chiseling, and still she remains. Dynamite and poison are extreme even for him. The time honored and passive-aggressive way may be the best. Move out, quietly and discretely. Hide your car. Don't answer the door of you new domain. Change your phone numbers. Changing your phone number at work could be a problem. Sometimes the boss doesn't get the humor. Sometimes the boss has had this done to her and could backfire big time. What about those guys that go out for a pack of cigs or a gallon of milk and are never heard from again. Do they put a lot of planning into this or just one night go,"I've had enough." He's always wondered how they get away with it. How do they start anew?
Toweling off, he wonders if he removed any bacteria. His towel stinks. Maybe it's the bacteria. His whole house stinks. There are too many people living here. Not to mention the critters. He doesn't have his dogs anymore. His heavy ex made sure they disappeared. Now he has raccoons and possums. There is cat food in about twenty places and garbage in about twenty more. They really like it. The really like getting into the attic and areas between the upper and lower floors. They have no consideration that he may be trying to sleep at five in the A.M. What are they doing? Wrestling, remodeling, fornicating? Do they mate in the spring? Am I going to be a grandfather?
The squirrels are hardly a bother anymore. He thinks the cats, raccoons, and possums intimidate them. He knows the two crows that have moved in do. The attack the squirrels right in the trees. They're dive-bombing and the squirrels are hopping from limb to limb. Somebody's gonna' end up on the pavement. The guy that came to pump out the septic system told me there might be a squirrel in the vent pipe. That is what may be causing the stink inside the house. He said' "Try running a hose down there and flushing it out, but be careful of flooding the house." Oh, yeah - that's a plan.
The septic system can't keep up with all the laundry being washed. He wonders if they just like the sound the washer and dryer make. These people will take their clothes out of their closet, remove from the hangers, and toss 'em in the dryer. They'll dry them for twenty minutes. What's up with that? How dry do they have to be? They think it fluffs them or gets the wrinkles out or makes them smell better. Their brains are wrinkled. Who wants to smell like dryer sheets? He already had to replace the heating element in the dryer. It went out due to the vent being clogged. It wasn't a squirrel. It was ten feet of lint. He pulled out enough to stuff a futon. The dryer was out of service for two weeks, tops. It was as if fast food and tv had been taken from them. They acted like the laundry-mat was another country. "Why are so many foreigners there? Why can't they speak English? Where do I get quarters?"
His liver hurts. He thinks it's his liver. It feels like a deflated soccer ball, with the texture of Swiss cheese. He used to eat healthy. Beans and rice and fish, salads with feta cheese. Now to eat healthy is to drain the fat off the meat or remove some pepperonis off the frozen pizzas. He drinks to get rid of his anxieties and then the anxiety of a liver transplant overrides all other. Bourbon and coke, heavy on the bourbon. Hell, the coke alone will rot your insides out. So he is forced to stop and try to exfoliate so no more bad stuff heads for the abused organ. He knows when the liver's had enough, he has no energy for anything. Getting up to get water is too much trouble and he only has to go to the bathroom for that. He tries his best to stay out of the kitchen lest he pass through the valley of tacky furniture. Does cat clawed leather couches go with Rococo amoires and Bombay Company wine racks? He also doesn't want to run into the dryer sheet people.
Want to keep your man happy? Talk little, expect less, and accept the fact that your Victoria Secret catalogues are going to disappear. He's at work, daydreaming. His co-workers are from India, yet are Christians. It is lunch and they are talking about Chinese food. It sounds like they are saying, shiny food. They ask him if he reads the Bible. He says his copy is in Spanish. "Donde esta Jesus?" They don't see the humor. Now days, you hear Spanish being spoken in the kitchen of the Wok Inn. Sometimes with an Oriental accent. He remembers the first time he heard a Mexican with a Texas drawl. They couldn't stop laughing. It was rude and the girl didn't understand. The town was Ozona, or some other deep-fried west Texas town. He thought she was a damn fine looking chica. He wonders where she is now. She was only a few years older then him. They were traveling from New Mexico to see his grandfather in a Hillsboro hospital. He had been diagnosed with cancer. He later shot himself with a pistol in a cornfield. Van Gogh did the same. His other grandfather drank himself to death, as did one of his uncles. The other uncle probably died from living too long with his aunt. Drinking or women. One or the other will cause his death.
A horoscope brought them together. She was chasing him. He was repellant. She was about to give up when her horoscope throws down a slam-dunk. Another of those women's magazine some how makes her think they are soul mates. He cannot believe she is basing the rest of her life on this. And, he tells her so. "The same exact thing that your horoscope says today, will be on some other sign tomorrow." He's Aries. If they had lived closer to a hospital he would have been a Pieces. A month ago his horoscope said he needed to get rid of excess baggage and move forward with his life. She doesn't consider herself excess and dismisses the advice. Shit never works in his favor. It's back to dynamite or poison. Or, exfoliation.
spring '04