Moon Rodríguez-Decker’s ceramic sculptures, installations, and performance work lace together ritual, repetition, and practice in order to raise questions about identity and existence.
He constantly challenges the sanctity of historically elitist materials such as porcelain, oil paints and gold leaf. These materials are used carefully, yet unconventionally, and become reborn within the installations.
Moon received his BFA with a concentration in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and recently received his MFA from the University of Delaware in December 2019. Currently, Rodríguez is making art at his home that he shares with his fiancé and two cats in Brighton, MA. He teaches classes at the Brookline Arts Center and works as a teaching assistant at MassArt.
A sunflower themed commission
Moon painting Transient
“Atlas Moon Rodríguez-Decker’s MFA thesis exhibition is a testament to the beauty and importance of process-based sculpture. The Puerto Rican-American, trans artist makes the historically elitist material of porcelain entirely his own through pinching, scratching, cutting, and mutilating the sacred white clay until its final form becomes anything but the image “porcelain” tends to conjure. The artist’s work is a highly intimate portrait of his cathartic journey towards mental well-being. The work is at once fragile, visceral, vulnerable, and robust. Repetition is imperative to the artist’s process and the result is a clear strength in numbers. The viewer is witnessing silent yet physical chanting, akin to a meditating monk process towards enlightenment. The artist views making not as a sprint, nor marathon, yet as a never-ending mechanism, like the energy that flows through the universe. This body of work invites the viewer to behold Rodríguez-Decker’s meditative journey to work through his anxiety and dysphoria towards serenity- a journey that has no beginning, middle, or end.”
-Ell Arbor