Art Palm Springs (art-palmsprings.com) is honored to be celebrating the first dual award recipients of Artist of the Year to Ed and Andy Moses during the event taking place February 16-19, 2018 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. 

The 2018 artist honorees are pioneering California artist Ed Moses (1926-2018), presented by William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, Calif., and Andy Moses presented by Melissa Morgan Fine Art in Palm Desert, Calif. Ed Moses passed away on January 17, 2018. His award will be posthumously presented to his wife, Avilda Moses on February 15, 2018 during the Opening Night Gala.

“We are honored to have both Ed and Andy Moses as Artists of the Year in 2018,” said Donna Davies, Vice President of the Art Group for Urban Expositions, producer of Art Palm Springs. “While it's not rare to find artistic talent passed down through one family, since the 1950s Ed Moses and Andy Moses have been prominent members of the southern California art scene, and we are so pleased to have the opportunity to recognize father and son in the same year.”

The duo join the ranks of Art Palm Springs’ Artist of the Year impressive list of Post War and Contemporary honorees including Judy Chicago, Mel Ramos, Jennifer Bartlett, Fletcher Benton, Larry Bell, and Lita Albuquerque.

Ed Moses (1926-2018), painted with an insatiable passion that spanned seven decades, from the late 1950s until just weeks before his death at the age of 91.  A self-described “mutator,” Moses mined the possibilities of abstract painting for over 60 years, leaving an indelible mark on the contemporary art world. Endlessly intrigued with the metaphysical power of painting, Moses created works about the expression of temporality, process and presence, remarking that “The point is not to be in control, but to be in tune.”

Ed Moses was born on an ocean liner headed to Long Beach, Calif., from Hawaii on April 9, 1926. After serving as a surgical tech during World War II, he intended to become a doctor, not an artist. He started Long Beach City College’s pre-med program, but dropped out, citing his inability to memorize the curriculum.

Over the next several years, Moses changed course when he took a life-changing painting class with artist Pedro Miller at Long Beach College in 1947. Later he enrolled at UCLA where he met fellow artist Craig Kaufman who introduced Moses to future Ferus Gallery owner Walter Hopps. Ed received his Bachelor's degree in 1955. In 1958, the influential Ferus Gallery became the site of Moses’ graduate show.

It was at Ferus that Moses became a member of the raucous group of artists known as the Cool School that included Kauffman, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Edward Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, John Altoon and Wallace Berman who pushed the boundaries of Post War art and shaped the nascent L.A. art scene.

Moses noted that his life and art were about "exploring the phenomenal world.” Unlike many of his contemporaries from the ‘60s and ‘70s, who worked within the boundaries of their respective movements, Moses never adhered to any singular art movement. Rather, Moses continued to experiment, seeking transformation and change over the notion of “creation." Moses approached each painting without preconception, embracing chance and circumstance, as he incorporated the “happy accidents” that occurred while charging into unknown territories of possibility waiting just beyond the veils of blank canvas.

A prolific artist, Moses painted daily. In 2016, an expansive survey exhibition at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica entitled, "Moses @ 90," filled the Bergamot Station gallery and the adjacent former Santa Monica Museum of Art space with paintings and works on paper that spanned from the 1950s to 2016, with many works that had never before been seen by the public.

Recently, Moses had been painting gestural pieces that seem to emit an energy and emotional imprint from their moment of creation. Surfaces are covered with splatters, drizzles and broad strokes of color, which are applied using brushes, rollers and sponges in a spontaneous, expressive manner.

"These paintings are ways that I can act out a thought or feeling — terror, misery, death,” Moses had said of his methods and work. "The rational mind constantly wants to be in charge. The other parts want to fly. My painting is the encounter between the mind's necessity for control and its yearning to fly, to be free from our ever-confining skull.”

In the last several years, Moses saw his work exhibited actively, in numerous important museum and gallery exhibitions throughout the U.S. and abroad. In 2015, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted a solo exhibition of Moses' drawings from the 1960s and ‘70s, curated by Leslie Jones. He was the subject of a major retrospective at MOCA Los Angeles in 1996, and in 2014 was featured in a retrospective at the University of California Irvine, titled Cross-Section. His works are featured in the collections of some of the most prominent cultural institutions nationally, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Hammer Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Beginning February 15, Melissa Morgan Fine Art (melissamorganfineart.com) will host a booth of solo works by Andy Moses at Art Palm Springs. Melissa Morgan Fine Art has exclusively represented the younger Moses’ work in the Coachella Valley for the past 12 years.

Since the mid-1980s, Andy Moses has made paintings that walk a fine line between gestural abstraction and new forms of representation. Over the past 15 years he has explored a multitude of surfaces and structural supports including convex, concave and parabolic shapes. He is currently working on a series of paintings on more extreme three-dimensional shapes.

From his earliest works he has employed radical and experimental painting techniques that push the boundaries of paint application as well as parallel natural forces in order to activate fresh conceptual and perceptual experiences.

Moses' paintings oscillate between technological simulations of nature and gestural abstractions. Compositionally, Moses often utilizes fluid surface patterns that suggest spatial references to earth, sea and sky, while also referencing notions of fractal patterning inherent across all scales of nature. As a result, the paintings embrace an inherent ambiguity. They evoke a sense of vast spatial planes, whether perceived on a macro or micro scale, and invite viewing from multiple vantage points. The goal for Moses then, is the dialogue and tension this creates between these disparate phenomena.

Andy Moses was the subject of a 30-year survey at the Pete and Susan Barrett Gallery at Santa Monica College in February 2017. His work was recently on view in the 25th anniversary exhibition at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation at Pepperdine University campus in Malibu.

He was born in Los Angeles and studied at California Institute of the Arts in the 1980s with many seminal figures in conceptual art including Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Douglas Huebler and Barbara Kruger. Shortly after his graduation from CalArts he moved to New York City to work as a studio assistant for Pat Steir. He began exhibiting his work in New York with Annina Nosei Gallery in 1986. Concurrent to working with Annina Nosei, Andy began exhibiting with Patricia Faure Gallery in L.A. where he continued to exhibit through 2007.

Andy now exhibits with William Turner Gallery in L.A. and Melissa Morgan Fine Art in Palm Desert. Over the length of his career, he has been shown internationally including exhibits in Italy, Norway, and Switzerland. His work is in numerous important private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), Laguna Art Museum, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. Like his father, Andy Moses lives and works in Venice, Calif.

The Artist of the Year Award and Arts Patron of the Year Award, being presented to David Kaplan and Glenn Ostergaard, during the Opening Night Celebration at the Palm Springs Convention Center February 15, 2018 from 5pm - 9pm. The fair is open to the public Friday, February 16 through Monday, February 19,2018.  Tickets and event details are available on the fair website art-palmsprings.com.

As the list of Art Palm Springs participating galleries continues to grow, the initial group of galleries committed to participate in the 2018 art fair includes:

A Gallery / Allen + Alan Fine Art, Salt Lake City, UT

Adamar Fine Arts, Miami, FL

Addison Rowe Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts, Binghampton, NY

Arcadia Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA

Arteria, Quebec, Canada

Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA

Axiom, Santa Monica, CA

Blue Rain Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Bruce Lurie Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD

Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

Charon Kransen Arts, New York, NY

Chiaroscuro / Gebert Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

Chimento Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA

Christopher Martin Gallery, Dallas, TX

Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA

CMay Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Concierge Fine Art, Minneapolis, MN

David Klein Gallery, Detroit, MI

DENK, Los Angeles, CA

Denis Bloch Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA

Dongwha Ode Gallery, Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Edward Cella/Michael Solway, Los Angeles, CA

Elan Vital, Cathedral City, CA

Fabrik Projects, Los Angeles, CA

Galleria Moro, Maracaibo, Venezuela

Gallery K.A.G., Annapolis, MD

Gallery Lee and Bae, Busan, South Korea

George Billis Gallery, New York, NY

GVG Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

Heller Gallery, New York, NY

GK Hinkson Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia

Hohmann, Palm Desert, CA

Willott Gallery, Palm Desert, CA

Jane Kahan Gallery, New York, NY

jdc Fine Art, San Diego, CA

Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

Jorge Mendez Gallery, Palm Springs, CA

LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM

Long-Sharp Gallery, Indianapolis, IN

Maria Elena Kravetz Gallery, Cordoba, Argentina

McNabb Martin Contemporary, San Diego, CA

Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA

Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York, NY

Peimbert Art, Los Angeles, CA

Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA

Gerald Peters Projects, Santa Fe, NM

Nine Dragon, Aspen, CO

Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom

SCAA - Sergott Contemporary Art, Rancho Santa Fe, CA

Sloan Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA

Sponder Gallery, Boca Raton, FL

ten|Contemporary, Grass Valley, CA

Themes+Projects, San Francisco, CA

Thomas Paul Fine Art / J Cacciola Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Timothy Yarger Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA

Travelogues Fine Art Consulting, Placitas, NM

Vincent Vallarino Fine Art, New York, NY

Wallspace, Los Angeles, CA

William Turner Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

Art Palm Springs is owned by Atlanta-based Urban Expositions, which produces Art Aspen, Art Palm Springs, FORM MIAMI and the Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design (SOFA) Fair in Chicago. All art fairs are presented by galleries from around the world exhibiting modern and contemporary art in a variety of media including painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed-media.

For more information about Urban Expositions’ art and design fairs, visit the following websites:

Art Palm Springs | www.art-palmsprings.com

Art Aspen | www.art-aspen.com

SOFA CHICAGO | www.sofaexpo.com

FORM MIAMI | www.formmiami.com