Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Jeremy Moon (1934 – 1973), opening in our Chelsea location on May 6th. Marking the gallery’s second presentation with the late British abstract painter, the show will reveal the breadth of Moon’s artistic output over the course of his short yet expansive career.
Jeremy Moon is best known for his large-scale geometric paintings that explore form and space through unmodulated planes of color. As a young, British artist in the early 1960s, he was of a generation inspired by American artists on the cutting edge of abstraction. In London, he worked in close proximity to mentors and peers that included Anthony Caro, Phillip King, and Bridget Riley. Central to the theoretical framework for his paintings, was his insistence on the canvas as object, a novel yet increasingly influential concept at the time. This interest led him to experiment with the shaped canvas, a format he would develop extensively over the course of his career. Moon’s use of the grid as a structural device was another integral aspect of his working method and he used it as a tool for experimentation in composition, scale, color, and rhythm. He also explored these concepts and techniques in a number of sculptures and throughout his expansive drawing practice.
Jeremy Moon: Starlight Hour, an illustrated monograph published by Luhring Augustine, is slated to be released in conjunction with the exhibition. This is the first comprehensive monograph of the artist’s work, and will present a chronology of Moon’s paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. The publication will also feature illuminating and in-depth essays along with an illustrated timeline that offers an intimate view into Moon’s personal relationships as well as his professional encounters over the course of his life and career.
Born in Altrincham, England in 1934, Moon studied law at Cambridge and worked in advertising before committing himself solely to art in 1961. Despite enrolling briefly at London’s Central School of Art, he was self-taught and described his way of working as ‘intuitive’. Moon’s death following a motorbike accident in 1973, aged 39, cut short a burgeoning career. He exhibited extensively in both the UK and internationally during his lifetime, and today his work is held in the permanent collections of numerous international institutions including Tate, London; British Museum, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Institute of Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence.
