Vela Projects is proud to present ODDSALUTE, Samuel Moscou’s third solo exhibition and his first in South Africa. Moscou was born in South Africa but has spent most of his life in Western Australia, where he continues to live and work. As a young man, he studied filmmaking in Los Angeles and London. Later he worked in construction, building houses, which lent a practical, DIY approach to working with his hands and physical materials.
In 2019, Moscou started to paint. Using construction boards, wet brushes, and cheap house paint, he taught himself - working everyday - familiarising himself with the materials and exploring the possibilities of what they could do.
Unconsciously or otherwise, the visual language that Moscou has developed over the past five years bears a striking resemblance to modernist painters in its palette as well as its treatment of figurative elements. The flat, line-drawn profiles in Bird feeder, Sisyphus learns to enjoy it, and The responsibility a BIG DOG recall the faces of Chagall. The woman in Bath house rest, with her blocky shoulders and mask-like features, could be a cubist nude by Picasso. Throughout, the bright, buoyant, summery colours remind one of work by the Fauvists such as Matisse, de Vlaminck, and Derain.
Moscou’s approach to painting is led by constantly building layers over the surface of the painting: “I don’t like to approach a painting with a plan, I like the paint to tell me what to do.” Spills, drips, smudges - these are opportunities to be investigated. When Moscou speaks mystically, he says that moments like these are when the painting communicates its own desires. This humble approach explains why, even though they make use of many layers and different stylistic elements, a sense of harmoniousness runs throughout his work.
Take Regailing the embellishment of the time I caught a sunfish to my dog as an example. The eye is immediately drawn to its central figure - his arms outstretched - and its various hues of blue - azure, cerulean, periwinkle. Later, globs of paint from the underlayers can be seen underneath the blue, lending its matte finish a pleasant texture. The figure itself is a strange amalgamation, composed of gluey layers of white over further layers of navy, grey, and teal. Its face, palette-like, is most mesmerising of all, so mesmerising that it takes a while for one to notice the unusual wolf-man just behind him, or the sunfish in profile. Around this scene, further layers reveal themselves: orange, red, yellow, green, purple, peach.
In this work and others, one can feel the freedom of expression that the artist feels when he paints, dancing around the studio, moving intuitively from one board to another. A process resulting in works that feel fresh, improvised, and unmediated.
In this vein, the exhibition’s title, ODDSALUTE, refers to a middle finger, “flipping the bird at expectations of what people want to see,” as the artist puts it. It’s a punkish reminder to be true to yourself. The title is also a play on obsolete. In the world of AI, seamless integrations, and new efficiencies, Moscou values the errs that come with being human. These mistakes are opportunities to progress, to reveal new possibilities and to learn something new. It’s an oddsalute to perfection.
Nevertheless, this tongue-and-cheek attitude belies the sensitivity that runs throughout his work. Falling off my ass, for example, is not a cheeky painting. It is not mean-spirited, farcical, or ironic. Its falling figure looks, oddly, serene. A sense of gentle movement is created by the layers of pigment that make up his arms - first wings of white, then dark red and yellow streaks, then, finally, pastel drawings of his hands, gathered loosely into fists, altogether creating an animated effect. This figure is not a bumbling, blundering cartoon character—the kind of person we would expect to fall off his ass but a mystical sort of man - Icarus, perhaps, or some kind of angel. The ass in question is equally mysterious. He squints slightly, scowls, as if he has been wronged in life, as if he is distrustful of the human world, like the donkey who is worked to death in Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar (1966).
Animals are motifs that recur across Moscou’s body of work, from the horse in Gimme all your horses, to the birds in Bird feeder and Swan lagoon, to the dogs in The responsibility of a BIG DOG and Regailing the embellishment of time. Their presence, symbolically or otherwise, commemorates a sympathy for nature and appreciation for its ambivalent beauty.
Pappy’s last harvest, similarly, depicts a farmer, smoking a pipe as he gazes at a field that has just been harvested, “thinking about all that he has been through,” as the artist puts it, “thinking about the work and how it will not end.” The expression on his face appears to be content. If there is a tonal thread that runs throughout ODDSALUTE, it’s this: contentment. Accepting failures, appreciating the small wonders—a cigarette, a rugby match, a visit from a dove. As the painting Sisyphus learns to enjoy it suggests, sometimes such details buoy life and make it worth living. Oddsalute to the rest.
