From March 26
Gori Mora's current practice focuses on exploring the myriad of effects that technology has on our social interactions, our self-perception, and our most intrinsic values. His work explores the history of the queer community, a journey within eroticism, trends of the moment, roles, and a reflection of the contemporary moment in which we find ourselves; a moment, where contact between people is made through social networks. He works with the topic of desire, understood as one of the main engines of social communication, and accentuated with new technologies. He explores how bodies are built and how we, as bodies, become objects of observation. Essentially, Mora makes a visual study of how the perception of reality in front of a representation of a body becomes indeterminate because of all the information we receive through media and context, and how this dictates the way in which we define ourselves.
To symbolise the concept of virtual space, for example, Mora very often uses oil on Perspex. He uses oil paint to highlight the contrast between our contemporary technology-based social interactions and our traditional means of communication, a reference to classical portraiture's role in courtship before the advent of photography.
He uses oils to create the figures on the back of the Perspex and once finished, he turns the acrylic sheet over. The contrast of the subject matter is mirrored in the mediums used, and therefore the aesthetic rendered. This unorthodox process creates a situation in which the viewer is confronted with the reverse of the painting. The aesthetic of an exhibition screen is invoked; a world just out of reach that one is at once privy to, yet ever estranged from.
