Press Release

We are pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Randy Moore.  For his first exhibition at Sperone Westwater, the artist will feature two large scale works: Subscription (1998 – 2002), comprising 56 oil on wood panels (standing 10 feet) that represent the spines of each Playboy issue from July 1998 – January 2003; and Auto Pilot (2002), a cast aluminum sculpture (approximately 69 x 48 x 120 inches) based on Hugh Hefner’s luxury jet.  Also on view will be four works depicting the Playboy bunny logo rendered out of chewing gum and surrounded by a frame constructed from the wrappers.

Randy Moore uses imagery from Playboy magazine to reflect on the boundaries of masculinity and femininity, sexual identity and the role of consumerism in constructing notions of masculinity and desire.  He conflates the imagery of Hugh Hefner’s personal jet with that of a serpent for Auto Pilot.  The jet’s tip touching its tail calls to mind “the ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a snake biting its tail, which has traditionally stood for the birth of the universe and been linked to the feminine, Auto Pilot pokes fun at the heroic vision of manhood as embodied by Hefner’s luxury jet” (Lisa Silver).  The work also signifies the notion of auto-eroticism, for the snake turns on itself for sustenance and pleasure similar to the magazine’s function as a tool for the auto-erotic pleasure of men. In Subscription, an ongoing monthly project begun in 1998, Moore reproduces four and a half years worth of Playboy magazine spines onto 10 foot high wooden slats propped against the wall.  Each spine is methodically rendered promptly upon the magazine’s monthly release.  Every slat, seductive through its bright colors and heroic stature, asserts the Playboy promise, “Entertainment for Men,” yet with each repetition, the phrase is emptied of its meaning, thereby commodifying this promise and ultimately, male desire.

Randy Moore, born in California and a graduate of the San Francisco Institute of Art, lives and works in New York City.  He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in California and New York as well as abroad and has most recently been the subject of solo exhibitions in Rome, London and Belgium.