Mosie Romney: it's not My Music

Los Angeles

May 7 – June 18, 2022

Press Release

it’s not My Music is its own echo. In here, witnessing becomes a form of authorship. Drawing from their vintage photo archive, Mosie Romney looks, corrodes, grows, and imprints found memories into new worlds. Their canvases are woven with magic—forms, figures, and ideas disappear and reappear within them. Subjectivity and the act of seeing and hearing become a metabolizing process that destabilizes the known, fixed states of mine/yours/ours/theirs. This is a Black collective production. This is call and response, this is the sample, the beat, the loop, the meme. It’s not my music, it’s ours!

The exhibition, Romney’s second solo with Nicodim, emerges underneath the nighttime magic of Hecate. Impossible spaces assert their dominion within and beyond the gallery walls— time and identity are compressed, distorted, opaqued, vaulted, organic, exhibitional—they produce their own fantasy acoustics. Sound and possibility are in abundance here. Bodies old and used morph into new, taking spirit-form. They explode through logic and time, caught mid-transit journeying through and opening portals. The music cracks, breaks, deconstructs, destroys in tradition and reverbs towards freedom.

 

What is the sound of a color? A lo-o-o-o-ok? How do you say “???” in real life?

 

Romney’s process breaks the boundaries of the archive, memory, truth, reality and fantasy. The audience becomes the player, the player becomes the director, the director becomes the subject, the subject becomes the scene. Characters vibrate on the brink, and break past their realms. People, creatures, spaces fall out of the works to look and see. They digest, frame, piss, fart, and sing out the worlds around them. Through mirrors, reflection, and refraction, we watch them experience and remember themselves. They, too, are authoring and we, once the audience, are allowing ourselves to be seen and made material. We are all transforming each other and leaving empty spaces behind.

 

— Ley, May 2022

Mosie Romney (b. 1994, New York) lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens, New York. A Jamaican-American artist, they received their education from SUNY Purchase, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts in 2016. They have been an artist in residence at the Home School, Hudson in 2018 and at Pocoapoco, Oaxaca City in 2021, and are included in the collections of the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Pond Society, Shanghai; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, curated by Mosie Romney, Nicodim New York (2022); Mosie Romney: Old, Used & New, Gern en Regalia, New York (2022, solo); Different Strokes, curated by Marcus Jahmal, Almine Rech, London (2021); Friend Zone, curated by Vaughn Spann, Half Gallery, New York (2021); Mosie Romney: ENERGYnever, Nicodim Upstairs, Los Angeles (2021, solo); Salon de Peinture, Almine Rech, New York (2021); Touch, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York (2021); Evening Lark, Y2K Group, New York (2020, solo); PAPA RAGAZZE!, a cura di Olivia Neutron Bomb, Nicodim Los Angeles (2020); and Mosie Romney and Juan Guiterrez, Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2020).

 

 

Selected Works

Selected Works Thumbnails
Mosie Romney

Long Game, That's All Folks!, 2022

oil and spray paint on canvas

53 x 108 in 

134.62 x 274.32 cm 

Mosie Romney

Long Game, That's All Folks!, 2022

oil and spray paint on canvas

53 x 108 in 

134.62 x 274.32 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Visitor, 2022

oil on canvas 

48 x 60 in

121.92 x 152.40 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Visitor, 2022

oil on canvas 

48 x 60 in

121.92 x 152.40 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Alternator, 2022

oil on canvas 

58 x 26 in 

147 x 66.04 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Alternator, 2022

oil on canvas 

58 x 26 in 

147 x 66.04 cm 

Mosie Romney 

it's not My Music, 2022

oil and spray paint on canvas 

74 x 48 in 

182.88 x 121.92 cm 

Mosie Romney 

it's not My Music, 2022

oil and spray paint on canvas 

74 x 48 in 

182.88 x 121.92 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Portal Hopping, 2022

oil, spray paint and rhinestones on canvas 

40 x 30 in 

101.60 x 76.20 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Portal Hopping, 2022

oil, spray paint and rhinestones on canvas 

40 x 30 in 

101.60 x 76.20 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Green Giant at the Table or Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, 2022

oil, mixed media, and spray paint on canvas 

81 x 72 in 

205.74 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Green Giant at the Table or Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, 2022

oil, mixed media, and spray paint on canvas 

81 x 72 in 

205.74 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney 

H-Bound, 2022

oil on canvas 

24 x 24 in 

60.96 x 60.96 cm 

Mosie Romney 

H-Bound, 2022

oil on canvas 

24 x 24 in 

60.96 x 60.96 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Mystique Style, 2022

oil on canvas

80 x 72 in 

203.20 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Mystique Style, 2022

oil on canvas

80 x 72 in 

203.20 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney, 

abundance is hedonism, my humble cousin, 2022

oil on canvas

60 x 120 

152.40 x 304.80 cm  

 

Mosie Romney, 

abundance is hedonism, my humble cousin, 2022

oil on canvas

60 x 120 

152.40 x 304.80 cm  

 

Mosie Romney, 

If You Sprinkle When You Tinkle, Be a Sweetie Wipe the Seatie, 2022

oil, granular gel, glitter and mixed media on canvas 

80 x 72 

203.20 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney, 

If You Sprinkle When You Tinkle, Be a Sweetie Wipe the Seatie, 2022

oil, granular gel, glitter and mixed media on canvas 

80 x 72 

203.20 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney 

I'll be your mirror, 2022

oil on canvas 

72 x 72 in 

182.88 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney 

I'll be your mirror, 2022

oil on canvas 

72 x 72 in 

182.88 x 182.88 cm 

Mosie Romney 

2022-2222, 2022

oil on canvas and toothpicks

18 x 14 in 

42.72 x 35.56 cm 

Mosie Romney 

2022-2222, 2022

oil on canvas and toothpicks

18 x 14 in 

42.72 x 35.56 cm 

Mosie Romney 

The Undertitty, 2022

oil on canvas 

48 x 60 in

121.92 x 152.40 cm

Mosie Romney 

The Undertitty, 2022

oil on canvas 

48 x 60 in

121.92 x 152.40 cm

Mosie Romney 

Drummer Boy, 2021

oil on canvas 

36 x 36 in 

91.44 x 91.44 cm 

Mosie Romney 

Drummer Boy, 2021

oil on canvas 

36 x 36 in 

91.44 x 91.44 cm 

Mosie Romney

No Parking, 2022

oil on canvas and colored pencil 

76.20 x 101.60 cm 

30 x 40 in

 

Mosie Romney

No Parking, 2022

oil on canvas and colored pencil 

76.20 x 101.60 cm 

30 x 40 in

 

Mosie Romney 

Untitled (embrace),  2021

oil, spray paint and rhinestones on canvas

72 x 50 in

182.88 x 152.40 cm

Mosie Romney 

Untitled (embrace),  2021

oil, spray paint and rhinestones on canvas

72 x 50 in

182.88 x 152.40 cm

Mosie Romney

Long Game, That's All Folks!, 2022

oil and spray paint on canvas

53 x 108 in 

134.62 x 274.32 cm 
Mosie Romney 

Visitor, 2022

oil on canvas 

48 x 60 in

121.92 x 152.40 cm 
Mosie Romney 

Alternator, 2022

oil on canvas 

58 x 26 in 

147 x 66.04 cm 
Mosie Romney 

it's not My Music, 2022

oil and spray paint on canvas 

74 x 48 in 

182.88 x 121.92 cm 
Mosie Romney 

Portal Hopping, 2022

oil, spray paint and rhinestones on canvas 

40 x 30 in 

101.60 x 76.20 cm 
Mosie Romney 

Green Giant at the Table or Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, 2022

oil, mixed media, and spray paint on canvas 

81 x 72 in 

205.74 x 182.88 cm 
Mosie Romney 

H-Bound, 2022

oil on canvas 

24 x 24 in 

60.96 x 60.96 cm 
Mosie Romney 

Mystique Style, 2022

oil on canvas

80 x 72 in 

203.20 x 182.88 cm 
Mosie Romney, 

abundance is hedonism, my humble cousin, 2022

oil on canvas

60 x 120 

152.40 x 304.80 cm  

 
Mosie Romney, 

If You Sprinkle When You Tinkle, Be a Sweetie Wipe the Seatie, 2022

oil, granular gel, glitter and mixed media on canvas 

80 x 72 

203.20 x 182.88 cm 
Mosie Romney 

I'll be your mirror, 2022

oil on canvas 

72 x 72 in 

182.88 x 182.88 cm 
Mosie Romney 

2022-2222, 2022

oil on canvas and toothpicks

18 x 14 in 

42.72 x 35.56 cm 
Mosie Romney 

The Undertitty, 2022

oil on canvas 

48 x 60 in

121.92 x 152.40 cm
Mosie Romney 

Drummer Boy, 2021

oil on canvas 

36 x 36 in 

91.44 x 91.44 cm 
Mosie Romney

No Parking, 2022

oil on canvas and colored pencil 

76.20 x 101.60 cm 

30 x 40 in

 
Mosie Romney 

Untitled (embrace),  2021

oil, spray paint and rhinestones on canvas

72 x 50 in

182.88 x 152.40 cm