Unlike most Canadian artists, Charles Alexander Moffat’s work embraces the contentious. And he’s not shy about it. Following the 9/11 attacks, Moffat created his now iconic painting "United States Censorship" which has since been featured in a documentary. Long associated with the Lilith Gallery of Toronto – one of the few males in a wholly feminist enterprise – Moffat’s work never fails to arouse mixed emotions, often tightroping the divide between sheer eroticism and political statement. Marked by superb figuration and a vivid, exploratory use of colour, his paintings daringly cover subjects as provocative and unexplored (if not taboo) as menstruation and androgyny.

Born in 1979 in Ontario Canada, Moffat developed a love of sculpture and painting during his teen years. Later, while at York University in Toronto, he studied such diverse subjects as feminism, art history, painting, sculpture, photography, lithography, drawing and mural painting, and came directly under the influence of the photography of Cindy Sherman. After graduating, Moffat traveled overseas and settled in Jeonju South Korea for a year where he made a photography series about the Korean demilitarized zone. It was during this time (2003-2004) that Moffat became more involved with video art and began "The Fear Americans," a series in which he satirizes and pokes fun at the Bush Administration and American fascism. Moffat later went back to York to study Chinese, Japanese and Korean before returning to South Korea for a second stint, this time settling in Seoul.

View full image of the above painting "Canadian Water Nymph" and other works in our gallery

charlesmoffat.com

In 2005 Moffat once again landed in Toronto where he started work on a new series of paintings, including the evocative “Sexual Blasphemy” and “Canadian Water Nymph”, both featured in our gallery. Recently Moffat took some time out from stirring up controversy to answer a few questions for TORO.

T: Which artists do you feel have influenced your work?

CM: Manet (not Monet), William Blake, Joyce Wieland, Andy Warhol. I lean towards those artists that favoured a more stylized version of realism, with a strong activist presence in their art. Manet really rocked the establishment when he painted a prostitute as a Venus.

T: Besides artists, can you name some of your other influences (political/aesthetic/personal).

CM: I´d have to say the mass media is a big influence.

T: Comment about the political nature of your work.

CM: I remember being really upset by the censorship and media bias during the Kosovo War. NATO was bombing schools and residential areas and calling it collateral damage. Apparently they only had a 25% accuracy when dropping bombs and laser guided missiles on targets. If a NATO plane got shot down it was front page news with big lettering. If they blew up a school bus full of children it was lucky to be on the 5th page in small print. I ended up painting "Lady Liberty Censoring the Truth" and in the background behind Liberty were headlines from the war.

T: Many of your paintings are figurative. Can you say something about this?

CM: I find I get more enjoyment out of painting people. During the process the painting takes on a persona and I find that persona, even though it´s not real, adds to the meaning of the work.

T: Androgyny, comment.

CM: A lot of people don´t really know much about androgyny, or they don´t really understand what it really is. People seem to think it means men who are sissies or women who are tomboys. Nothing could be further from the truth. Androgyny means taking only the best traits of the stereotypical masculine and feminine roles and combining them into a persona (there´s that word again) that is both aggressive and compassionate. There´s even a psychological assessment test people can take to determine how masculine, feminine, androgynous or non-gendered their personality is. The sad thing is that the whole thing is based on stupid stereotypes of what society thinks is masculine and feminine. I see nothing wrong with men and women being both compassionate and aggressive, and it´s silly to call them tomboy or whatever just because they´re not passive assholes.

T: "United States Censorship" – tell me if you´ve encountered any censorship of your work and ideas.

CM: That painting hasn´t been censored much, if at all. It´s all over the place now. People just take the image off my website and use it for whatever. So far it´s been a documentary on the F-word and later this year is coming out on a hip hop DVD.

T: Comment on "The Fear Americans."

CM: The Fear Americans Series was a series of videos I made while in South Korea. I was seeing the Iraq War from the Korean perspective, was watching a lot of BBC World News on cable and was reading the Toronto Star daily for news from Canada. The mass media from the States (CNN and Fox News) was overtly in favour of the war and I felt the need to make something that pushed back against the propaganda bullshit coming from the White House. So I collected video clips from the US military, documentaries about past wars, the oil industry, popular culture things like the Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead and even a fake snuff film of a soldier having his throat cut. From there I organized the clips into topics, mixed and matched them and came up with the different videos. The Bushitler was the most popular of them, and it´s a shame that YouTube banned it. They never explained why.

T: Can you tell us a little about your South Korean experience?

CM: South Korea is a wonderful country with exceptionally polite and hospitable people. There are some bad eggs, and the way they treat the homeless over there is rather deplorable. Garbage pickup is pretty bad too. The cities smell like rotting garbage 24/7 and there´s a huge mold problem. There´s a huge lack of public toilets as well. I was shocked the first time I saw a guy just whizzing in the street, broad daylight. One time I was coming home and there was a toddler wandering the streets crying. Looked like she had been abandoned or was lost. For all its faults however South Korea is like a second home to me now. I get homesick for it constantly. I just wish we could shame the Korean people into being more proactive about their social problems. Not that we Canadians do much better. We crap on the poor and unfortunate just as much as they do.

T: Abstract expressionism – your feelings about it.

CM: Abstract expressionism was a wonderful movement, but people make too much of a fuss about it. The movement is dead and has been dead for 30 years. Anyone still doing that type of work these days are Jackson-Pollock-wannabes who haven´t even studied the theory behind the work. Pollock at least was into Jungian psychology and understood the theory behind the practice. These days people need content, not wallpaper. People have tried to create a neo-abstract expressionist movement, but they simply fail because it’s too pretentious. People have forgotten the theory and there´s no shock value to it anymore.

T: Comment about the overtly sexual aspects of some of your work.

Sooner or later an artist is going to end up painting something vaguely sexual without even realizing it. I remember someone looking at the atomic blast in "Freudian Explosion" and saying it looked like a semi-erect penis because of the hydrogen explosion in the upper atmosphere. The original title had something to do with war metaphors, so the penis thing was a happy accident and I ended up changing the title. Afterwards I ended up making a whole series of paintings with penises secretly hidden in the painting.

T: Do you deliberately court controversy with your work?

CM: Yes. I once did a series of paintings about menstruation and how men don´t understand it. Seriously, men don´t have a clue, and we avoid the topic at all costs because its a big taboo for us.

T: Should art (or must it) be political?

CM: I think all art could be considered political, even when you are painting landscapes (because then you´re an environmentalist promoting naturalism). If you paint a television set you´re making a comment about the mass media and consumer culture. If you paint food you´re making a comment about obesity, anorexia, eating disorders and healthy eating. If you paint two lovers kissing you´re making a comment on sexuality and relationships. If you paint a sports car you´re commenting on the aesthetic value of gasoline-based transportation. Books = illiteracy vs knowledge. Pants = Gender roles, fashion and wealth. It may only be a subconscious statement on the topic. You could paint a beautiful sandy beach in Jamaica and it would still be escapism. So no, art doesn´t have to be political, but it is anyway.

T: An artist in Canada – comment.

CM: Canadians know very little about Canadian art beyond the Group of Seven and Emily Carr. I even setup a survey months ago at www.arthistoryarchive.com which asks people to name 10 living Canadian artists and 10 dead ones. It´s dreadful that we pay so much attention to crap like Canadian Idol when Canadian artists (both alive and dead) deserve so much more attention. Most Canadians won´t even know who Bertram Brooker or Joyce Wieland is. Joyce Wieland helped make the geese in the Eatons Centre and her name isn´t even on the plaque and instead her husband Michael Snow got all the credit, despite the fact that it was her idea.

T: Is video (and its digital offspring) a viable art medium?

CM: You can make great social commentary with video, but good luck selling it. To make anything worthwhile financially you´d have to make a film, and then thanks to Bill C-10 you can´t make any kind of social commentary about sexuality or violence any more. Not in Canada at least. The Canadian movie industry is going to die unless they get rid of that stupid piece of censorship.

T: Which contemporary artists do you respect or feel connected to?

CM: I´d like to immediately say Jennifer Linton and Victoria Van Dyke, just because they´re also in Canada. A. Andrew Gonzalez is wonderful, and Daniel Edwards has done a good job of poking fun of celebrities. Cindy Sherman would be my personal favourite.

T: What are you working on now?

CM: I am currently working on a script for a zombie movie and trying to find a director, a camera crew, and a casting director. I´d love to get Sarah Polley to direct, since she acted in Dawn of the Dead. Thanks to Bill C-10 I´m very tempted to include lots of violent zombie sex just to piss off the censors. And contrary to popular belief zombies make great social commentary. Zombies watching TV, zombies standing in the ATM line, zombies on the subway . . . you get the idea.

T: Where do you see your work going?

CM: I definitely want to start making films, but I´ll only be writing and producing them. Painting-wise I want to start doing murals again. Landscapes, portraits, it doesn´t matter.

Salvatore Difalco is, among many things, senior writer at TORO and the author of Black Rabbit & Other Stories.