Artist Statement

In her exhibition Rock, Paper, Scissors, painter Jennifer Moses explores a playground game literally and metaphorically. This classic game of chance and anticipation is designed to negotiate conflicts, make decisions, and establish power; rock dominates scissors, paper binds rock, and scissors cut paper. The game is also a metaphor for art-making, in which one aesthetic or conceptual choice supplants another. This kind of improvisational response is a signature of Moses's approach to constructing images. 

In this time of uncertainty, power struggles, inequality, and contests for supremacy, the random nature of a throw-down (one two three shoot!) to determine winners and losers seems to mirror real life. 

The title also alludes to Moses' visual language of flat, sometimes cut-out shapes. In this show, she continues her use of combined abstract and representational imagery, and of colliding themes such as narrative and gestalt, comic and tragic, line and shape, and rooted and meandering.

McQuaid, Cate. "Things to do around Boston this weekend and beyond–Jennifer Moses: Rock, Paper, Scissors." The Boston Globe, December 30, 2021.

Ogden, Claire. "Political Playground: Abstraction and Figuration Face Off in Jennifer Moses' Rock, Paper, Scissors." Kingston Blog, January 4, 2022.

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