Moses E Hoskins Archives (potpourri up to 2016) / to an extent: parts & examples from his body of work
Book of Debris / ca 1995 - 98
1st solo show at OK Harris - 2000
drawings during Mumbai dental trip - 2015
Yaddo residency - 2010
...There in Iowa, in his 20's and early 30's (mid 70's to mid 80's) he was becoming to think of himself as a portrait painter. - By that time in his training he had learned 'proper' painting technique and with a natural facility for drawing, most of his work consisted of privately commissioned oil-on-canvas portraits, mainly of local folks and charcoal portrait drawings at art fairs / as pictured below:
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on BFK, ca 1990
Gillette Gallery at the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, NY solo exhibition of paintings - 2011
1989/ '90
painted 2000
The American Embassy - San Jose, Costa Rica 2002 >
Art In Embassies Program / US Department of State
-- later on in 2010, another painting was included at a different embassy:
Tunis,Tunisia - in conjunction with Art in Embassies
at the Roger Smith Hotel
Sandpaper Collages / 1994
Mario Naves Currently Hanging / The New York Observer, October 15, 2001: Collages That Stray From Diebenkorn ...a searching equanimity is yoked from the diagrammatic and geometric. Breaking the rectangular format Diebenkorn assiduously honored, Mr.Hoskins pursues what we’ll call pure collage -that is to say an art of material, not illusion. Hoskins combines old envelopes, labels and things the rest of us toss in the wastepaper basket with an appreciative eye for contrast, gently pitting smooth surfaces against wrinkled ones, staples against Scotch tape, clean forms against rough edges...
-from Scott Speh's Hot Commodoties,12 Views at Drawing Center (Soho), fall 2001: Yet another intriguing Selections show at the Drawing Center! I love Moses Hoskins’ dirty collages. They look like Richard Diebenkorn and Richard Tuttle were collaborating in a dumpster outside Office Max, as Hoskins incorporates paper, envelopes, boxes with acrylic, ink, pencil and "diverse tapes" in fresh-funky abstract assemblages.
The Drawing Center / 2001
collage with drawing - 2010
OK Harris / Re- assembled 2002 / group
OK Harris / New York (OK Harris closed in 2014 )
In1988 Hoskins finally got around to fleeing to New York City as a better place, ostensibly, to not amount to anything - where they informed him that Houston St. is pronounced 'Howston' and that 'regular' is with milk & 2 sugars.
1988
In 1992 the piece shown here was included with another from the same batch in Paper Houses at David Beitzel Gallery
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- also (unrelated) :
1991 - 4 pieces from this same series were given a wall to themselves at Saint Peter's Church on E 54th Street
During this expanse, in the late 70's, he found himself back in school again, this time at the University of Iowa where mainly he drew naked people and was a janitor at night / He recalls meditations alone in the presence of the University's famous Pollock 'Mural', pondering for what it would be he should do ...
After degree work was completed he ended up doing portraits as before. There would be a few more years until he would begin ('85 or so) working abstractly...
oil on canvas / 1987
included in the state annual jurored exhibition featuring work by Iowa artists at the Des Moines Art Center
This piece is now in a private collection somewhere on the east coast
This piece from the 1st series of paintings on canvas that Hoskins produced in New York was shown with several from the same series in the windows of Sak's 5th Avenue in Chicago in 1989
1 example of corresponding/commensurate work on canvas from the early '90's
2007 & 2006 Karin Sanders Fine Art - Sag Harbor, NY
... each piece of cardboard detritus retains some elements of its origin. It's a crafty gambit that serves to ilustrate how the artist's unique vision informs much of his overall worldview and creative construct. - Jennifer Landes, East Hampton Star
... Mr. Hoskins uses an assertive approach to surface and line in his abstract compositions, emphasizing tonal and color juxtapositions that are balanced by a confident use of negative space. - Eric Ernst, Southampton Press
2001 / pencil drawings on typing paper AND a series of diptychal looking canvases
paint on assemblage assembled from dumpster wood scraps, '96
New American Paintings, juried exhibitions in print June, 1997 Volume 2 Number 4
Open Studios Press
paintings from '96
Hoskins at The Slummette / Spring Street
1988- '97
photo Harold Graves
and also in '87, on paper
1997 - leaving The Slummette for a commercial space 8th &36th
photo / A R
- a stack of shirtbords was just sitting there tied together, set on the curb next to a stack of magazines evidently intended for the trash.
seemingly innumerable / 1990 -'93
renderings on 'found' shirtboards, 7&3/4x 11 inches
drawing & painting
Many of these 'drawings' have been distributed but a boxful remain in storage, yellowing with the passage of time.
A portfolio of 50 or 60 of them was lost, never recovered, at the airport in Paris during his 1st trip there in Feb '92
from biographical narrative portion of one of his grant applications:
... It was around this time I found myself doodling anomalous renderings of architectural phrieux-phrieux onto anything i was doing -almost as graffiti.
- Subsequently this tendency was to become practiced, integral in much of his work.
-as the Disneyists usurped the proximity (+ 911) & as the lease elapsed on a commercial space with the new rent to become quadruple - & only after what came to be a graceless segue of a year in Brooklyn, Hoskins moved it all in 2003 to inelegant Outerboro where he remains...
assemblages / Thai Cafe - Grennpoint, Brooklyn 2002 / solo
renderings on wood / dumpster scraps / paint & drawing variously applied / & occasional collage included 1990 - '93
concurrently :
'89 -- paint on paper, 39x 50 inches
1 example among paintings produced in 2003, 30 x 42 inches
evidence of a sequence of paintings installed at some forgotten venue during mid 00's
a group of 6 of them as displayed many years later in a group show in 2012/ Soul Seekers: Interpreting the Icon / Trinity Church Museum, Wall Street
The Vision Glorious / General Theological Seminary, 2005