“Holiday Inn” Mixed Media, 2013
The Kills’ Alison Mosshart has opened her debut art show in New York. Called ‘Fire Power’ the show is on at the Joseph Gross Gallery in Manhattan.
The exhibition, features 127 pieces including paintings, drawings, mixed media, and tapestries that “reflect Mosshart’s life on the road.”
Best known for her role as singer/songwriter for The Kills and The Dead Weather, Alison Mosshart is a self-taught artist whose work is personal, intuitive and responsive without being over-thought. A lifelong ‘maker,’ Mosshart created art as often as she could while on tour; only recently was she able to settle into a more formal studio space, allowing for the expansion into larger works. The work in Fire Power glorifies the transience of life on the road, with each piece a snapshot of a person, conversation, place, time or mood in Mosshart’s continuously mobile life. Works in Fire Power can be grouped into informal series’ including portraits, works on Persian carpets, and ‘tire track’ abstract pieces. These experimental tire track paintings, such as Test Drive (2014), were borne out of numerous remote control cars, tire treads, paints, inks, and varieties of paper. Big Red (2014) is the largest of these, which Mosshart created by driving a remote control monster truck over the canvas until the batteries flatlined. All of her work is created quickly and passionately. Inspiration for The Pest (2014) came after Mosshart observed an argument, with the painting depicting two abstract faces in bold, contrasting colors. Extra teeth were added to the face depicting that of the “pest.”
This painting of multiple eyes, ears and teeth is indicative of Mosshart’s ideas on multiple viewpoints and the complications of human interactions. Mosshart describes her collage piece, Daughter of the American Used Car Dealer (2015), as both personal and aesthetic. She surrounded a muscle car at the center with snippets of nature-themed postcards. The muscle car at the center of the collage reflects both her childhood as the daughter of a car dealer and her love for the open road, with the nature scenes representative of the blurred landscapes driving down the highway. “There are few things I find more freeing and romantic as bombing down a highway,” she says.
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Joseph Gross Gallery 548 West 28th Street, #232 New York, NY 10001
