Best known as America’s formidable electronic musician who shaped dance music in the early 90’s, performed at Limelight in its heyday, and ventured into Pop with Gwen Stefani in Y2K’s “South Side,” Moby has added art-making to his talents, via his camera. artnet News sat down with the artist-musician to talk about his current show,”Innocents“, at Emmanuel Fremin Gallery in Chelsea.
A take on psychology, Moby’s series of photographs presents familiar yet distorted images to the spectator. The images portray ordinary mundane settings like a grocery store, or a pool, but with the inclusion of cloaked and masked figures, which are intended to be signifiers of what he calls “the world’s first post-apocalyptic cult.” The result is ambiguous though disconcerting. Moby’s aim is exactly this—he wanted to create photos that are laden with possible meaning in the hopes that the viewer can freely interpret them. Interested in blending artistic forms, “Innocents” is also the title of his 2013 album.
Moby, née Richard Melville Hall, was born in Harlem, New York but was raised in Darien, Connecticut. After having spent many years during the height of his career living in New York City’s lower east side, the artist moved to Los Angeles, where he told artnet News, his living room is completely bare. A well-known animal rights supporter, Moby lives a vegan lifestyle and even though he hates objects, he is arguably one of the biggest collectors of antique drum machines. Besides playing in his band, Friends of Animals (which includes Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and H20 singer Tony Morse), his upcoming project is a new ambient album which is a follow-up to his record, Hotel, aptly named Hotel Ambient.