NYAB Event - Aris Moore "Nil and Fancy"

Aris Moore "Nil and Fancy"

Jack Hanley

This event has ended.

Jack Hanley Gallery presents the first solo exhibition of portraits by Aris Moore. Most of the portraits are of women, though many include men, children, a couple or a family. With disturbingly disproportionate faces, and pleasantly detailed and delicate clothing, the people of Nil and Fancy straddle the lovely and the grotesque.

Inhabiting the space between what is perceived versus what is presented, Moore's people are neither child nor adult; never entirely strong, nor vulnerable; attractive nor repulsive. She gives them an uncanny semblance of personality. In fact, while uncomfortably strange, a figure will seem even more unnervingly familiar. It is difficult not to find a peculiar likeness to someone else, be they known, or imagined.

Faced with this ambiguity, the viewer becomes a participating judge of character. A couple’s embrace may signify comfort to some, or control to others. A girl’s smile can be questioned or taken at face value. Without revealing too much about anyone, Moore pinpoints our own attempts to fill in these gaps, though often we are left with all-too-human contradictions.

Aris Moore is a recent MFA graduate of the Art Institute of Boston, culminating in a thesis exhibition last spring. Her work has traveled with the gallery to numerous art fairs, and was included in a group drawing show at the gallery in April. She currently lives and works in Exeter, NH, teaches middle school, and raises two children.