Oakland Art Murmur, in partnership with Immersive Arts Alliance and local property owners, is activating empty storefronts with art created by Bay Area artists. Our second installation is by Oakland artist Chadwick Heath Moore.

Chadwick Moore uses a wide range of components – from discarded infant formula bottles and abandoned furniture, to collage imagery from both found and personally taken photographs – he builds a dense palette to create psychological landscapes.

“My mother, who worked at Walmart for many years, told stories of fights that broke out during Black Friday sales. Often the sheriff’s department needed to intervene. These stories seemed outrageous, but were true and, in a way, encapsulate my interest in consumer culture. In how the things we buy, whether necessary or not, take root deep within our psyche and become a part of us. I’ve used a variety of sources as a starting point for my work; the piles of stuff left on the sidewalk by the homeless in San Francisco, environmental disasters like The Pacific Garbage Patch and more recently the use of archetypes in marketing and branding to tap into what Carl Jung called “The Collective Unconscious”. – Chadwick Heath Moore