Patternmaking

Daniel Moldoveanu’s solo exhibition centers on three portraits: Mia, Tenwi and Moonman (all 2019), each featuring digitally printed garments as a tactic of submerging the individual figures within their backgrounds, creating an illusory iconographic interplay. Untitled (2020) consists of a large format canvas accommodating a sporadic constellation of flatly figurative, historical motifs which at first glance simulate the look of a wallpaper-(pattern) yet lack any tangible report. In addition to this, a ‘Viewer Instruction Manual’ is installed on the left-hand side of the canvas. Sex (2020) capitalizes on the ambiguity of its tag and emphasizes the libidinous subtext of the exhibition. The exhibition attempts to playfully bridge the link between product-development and self-development by drawing on a multitude of pictorial and medial references. Regardless of how fashionable, unique or aesthetic the finished garment may look like, its pattern will always betray it as a commodity and will shamelessly attest to the calculability, repetitions and requirements of typification within our consuming bodies. As the unavoidable byproduct of the manufacturing process, patented and hidden away from consumers and competition alike, the patterned cut fungates as an analogy for the subject disappearing into type. Patternmaking concerns itself with the interwovenness of iconography, body and sex as types; as signifiers and patterns alike. Daniel Moldoveanu (*1999 Constanta, Romania) lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. He graduated from the Vienna Institute of Fashion and is currently enrolled at the Humboldt University and the University of Fine Arts, Berlin, studying Cultural Studies, Art History and Fine Art. Shows include: Hindrance to Modern Speed, Sehsaal, Vienna, 2018; Stimulus, Art Institute Vienna, 2018; Appearances, 21er Pavilion, 21er Belvedere, Vienna 2016; Teleportation, PARALLEL Vienna, 2015. Upcoming shows: Flickering, SABOT Gallery, Cluj 2021.