We were lucky enough to make the opening night of Moneyless‘ solo exhibition at Soze Gallery “Per Aspera Ad Astra”. Moneyless who worked in residency at Soze Gallery was able to complete almost all of his work during his stay in Los Angeles. Moneyless has been gaining momentum over the last year and is quickly becoming one of today’s rising artists. We have watched the recent progression of Moneyless since we first featured him on the sight over a year ago. We were able to sit down with him and get some insight into new tools and reasoning behind his recent progressions. We had been seeing a new use of compasses and engraving elements that shaped his aesthetics. The spiraling geometry, circular movements encased in symmetry.
Moneyless is able to build perfect symmetry with geometry, yet the natural inconsistencies in the work really enhance the pieces in person. Even his silk screened prints rely on the imperfections of chance. Engraved texture made by actually scratching the surface of paint lifting the hidden surfaces underneath. It is this simple yet important aspect of the work that brings to light the nuances of Moneyless. Making something from nothing, creating art where others see none. His in situ installations in nature are referenced in a piece of flying art in the middle of the exhibition.
Our favorite piece from the show was a handmade box with an antique book on geometry mirrored by a small intricate moneyless mini installation. This box is surrounded by the tools of moneyless, an antique large compass with metal tips and 2 engraving tools mounted to a piece of wood. These tools are integral in his recent aesthetics not only in the gallery but also on recent mural installations. Luck would lead Moneyless to find these tools. One was found in an abandoned factory in Glasgow, and the other in a small market in Italy. Both represent the chance and destiny that is Moneyless. Staying true to his mantra Moneyless creates the most with the least, and leaves Los Angeles with some important new work.
GF
Bio
Born in Milan – class 1980 – and raised in Tuscany, Moneyless’ art is characterized by an investigation on the rawest elements of life and takes for granted a process of continuous evolution. He certainly owes his graphical mark to the street, where he was born as an artist and where he grounded his roots in the ’90s graffiti/writing scene. “I wanted to undress the letters from the alphabetical presence” he says – then Teo started focusing on the pureness of the shape, the pregnancy of geometry in the fundamentals of life, gradually taking distance from walls and lettering – “My efforts then dropped the symbolic meaning of the letter”.
His artistic research, relieved by the weight of a fixed form, made his style move towards a pure geometry onthology. Moneyless’ aesthetic seems to quote a Platonic vision where geometry is represented as the structure, the foundation upon which all nature is built. Fire, air, water and earth are the basic elements of existence and they come out from the multiplication of the main geometrical figure, the triangle: we’d better say division rather than multiplication, because it’s through subtraction that Moneyless looks into evolution. Nature thus becomes functional to the work of art: Moneyless’ essential forms are processed one after the other, and still entrenched within a structural complexity, they mean simplicity and neatness.
In this picture, the artist still desires to achieve an intimate relationship with the spectator, and is asking him to challenge the environment, forcing him to face this duty and finding the spot that frames the artwork. Consider a forest. Wooden textures on the background now get a role in the picture, as sky and clouds and all the leaves and branches included in the picture. Again, these installations stand for the principle of creation. “My shapes are reduced to the minimum, at the same time they carry some kind of an intense tension, an invisible movement; most of my patterns hide multiple visions and different perspectives. I think my art now speaks through geometry”.
The kind of art he’s developing, as much as his name, suggests an investigation on pureness and simplicity of life. The artist’s vision presupposes the rejection of speed, pollution, and all contemporary hurries in order to replace our attention on the purity of thought.
