Opening September 15, Moss Gallery presents Make Me. The emergence of Butch-Craft in contemporary design.

Oscar Magnus Narud: Keel

Through the infusion of a cerebral yet virile narrative applied to rough work crafted in wood, iron, steel, marble, rush, paint, boiled leather, clay, baked agricultural waste, plant-life, gypsum drywall, and blood, sweat and tears.

Moss introduces the term ‘Butch-Craft’ to articulate a phenomena: that after years of an increasingly accepted yet hard-won broader definition of design, liberated only recently from the mandatory ‘form follows function’ credo, we are witnessing a kind of backlash. Not a retreat from the now-accepted practice of infusing poetic narrative into functional objects — we still want to engage more fully with our object culture, not simply regard it as a ‘tool for living’. Instead, we are seeing the emergence of an alternative means of giving this ‘art content’ form and expression in functional objects. Poetic narrative no longer needs to be dressed in traditional ‘Art’ garb — it no longer needs to ‘pass’ as Art.

Through the examples presented in MAKE ME. Moss is acknowledging a tipping point, where art-in-design no longer needs to look like what we recognize as Art; art-in-design no longer needs to wear its art on its sleeve.