Who doesn’t love staring at a brick wall? I do it every day as I’m trying to write. I look out my window at the apartment building across the street, which is laughably similar to a couple of Andrew Moeller’s paintings below. The ubiquity of mid-level, block apartments in my neighborhood in Seattle drew me to these paintings, which at first seem like a stark presentation of conventionality, an updated version of the white picket fence, etc. But then I got to thinking about the characters who populate the bland buildings in my neighborhood: hoarders, students, bros, barflies, creeps, debutantes. The flat façades give no indication of the inhabitants.

The paintings also have a more lively origin than they suggest. For “Painting VIII,” Moeller staged a six day “performance” at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, where he allowed fifty-two museum-goers to paint (with the aid of a meticulous masking job) the bricks of the depicted building. With this context in mind, there is an ironic disconnect between what the painting seems to propose and the collaborative circumstances of its making.

“Painting IX”  acrylic, graphite on board  37″ x 48″  2011

“Painting VII”  acrylic, transfer, graphite on board  37″ x 48″  2010

“Painting 0″  acrylic, transfer, graphite on board 37″  x 48”  2008

“Painting XI”  acrylic, transfer, graphite on board  37″ x 48″  2011

“Painting VIII”  acrylic, transfer, graphite on board  37″ x 48″  2010

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“Painting V”  acrylic, transfer, spray paint, graphite on board  37″ x 48″  2010