The inflated masks while brilliant, aren’t all that interesting to look at. Their dull plasticity on the goo-gloss of grey enamel floors looking cheap in comparison to the copper pieces’ more-than-just-the-color-of money hanging behind them, beauty’s patina masking the cultural currency, the thick chunks forged of the symbolic-mine. And in the other what-used-to-be-gallery-entire is now the back showroom for a single artwork in what has become the brokerage of conceptual power-art, wasting space like it’s L.A.
Moulène seems best when his objects are bordering banal, like DIA’s huge clown-tent missile; unexpectedly mixing power, glitz, and ugliness in equally estranging components, a tumor of confoundment more than the skull-balloon on view here, though Moulène's commitment to the head-subject is interesting.
It would be hard to not acknowledge the kinship to the younger Michael E. Smith, both using what appear to be skull chips in pairs, both recycling refuse into mysterio-objects denying explanation’s assuaging.
See too: Michael E. Smith at Susanne Hilberry
