Culture

Rice and Beans Gallery (February 24 - March 15, 2011).

Entering Reuben Moss’s Don’t look up creates a strong sense of having entered a disjointed environment, with many of the exhibition’s core ideas leaving the viewer feeling distant. Don’t look up examines the horrors of war, expressions of Utopia and the oversaturation of violence in society.  It consists of a replication of Goya’s Firing Squad of the 3rd of May 1808 (1814), a distorted documentary on the De Stijl movement and a projection of videogame Doom. However, the collaging of different media makes Moss’s work seem unpolished , as though he were overwhelmed by all the concepts he wanted to explore. The poor quality of the replication of Firing Squad  makes it seem meaningless, lacking the agonising emotion which the original painting imparts. The De Stijl documentary examines the search for Utopia, an ideal society possessing a perfect socio-political system. The Doom projection portrays graphic violence, but disappointingly (indeed, devastatingly) lacks interaction. Nonetheless, although the different images are only loosely entwined, one gets the sense of Moss as an active creator of meaning and subsequently leaves having been exposed to some interesting ideas.