In a world of industrialized spells, tinged by burnt coal and blood money, make magic that sings for its own sake.

—Tyler Moore

Tyler Moore’s spells strive to exist in and of themselves. They make no excuse or justification for their existence: no promise to speak to the dead, predict next year’s grain or gold prices, or read the mind of lawyers during a hostile takeover. They are simply beautiful, challenging, and awe-inducing. Before his sudden death, he practiced a wide range of magic, never focusing on a single school or tradition, and in turn created his own kind of magical vocabulary. This retrospective on the late spell-crafter, featuring five never-before-seen pieces, looks at his spells in the spirit with which he worked. It is important to remember he did not want this.

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Synesthesia no. 6, 2009

Tyler Moore

Phonograph, Blood Runes, Ochre

In this evocative early work, representative of his foray into runic enchantment, a vinyl recording of The Goldberg Variations plays on an old phonograph. The sounds of the piano and Bach’s numinous arias are intercepted by a block of ochre, adorned with runes believed to be written with Moore’s own blood. The music is sieved through an invisible net, transforming the sound into visual, olfactory and even tactile senses. Viewers experience music in a wholly unique way. Harmonies appear as waves of color and reach the viewer as the sensation of a hand grabbing their wrist. All the while the burnt smell of forest fires lingers beneath each sound, a winding, horrible stench of distant destruction.

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Hummingbirds, 2026

Tyler Moore

Mirror, sea glass, sand

Three mirrors face one another, creating an equilateral triangle in this piece of refractive magic. Between them, sand and half-buried sea glass cover the floor. When a viewer kneels or squats before one of the hip-height mirrors and gazes into their reflection, the sea glass begins to rise from the sand. Viewers can watch the spell only by ignoring it. Look away from the mirror, and the glass falls into the sand. My first spell turned a candle’s flame into a butterfly. It landed on my lover’s hands because I wanted him to know the fire of my chest was a pretty thing. It burned him so badly he needed to go to the hospital. He insisted I stay with him, even as his parents insisted I leave. I was a boy, after all, and this burn was only evidence of what they already believed our love meant. I would give anything to singe like that again. To make something that matters.

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Transmogrification, 2027

Tyler Moore

Raccoon, Dove, Gold, Lead, Plexiglass

In a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of the late twentieth century “magician,” and alchemy as a whole, in Transmogrification, a dove flies through the gallery. When it reaches the plexiglass hat, it lowers itself and transforms in full view into a taxidermied raccoon. In each transformative instance, the assumed narrative flow of magic is upended: life becomes death. Eventually the bird returns, but in the lacuna between transitions, viewers are asked to contemplate the unspoken misery that undergirds these white walls. My first show, I was so excited I didn’t sleep for a week. My first piece sold for $45,000. I was so happy that the spell mattered to someone. A week later I learned the buyer had sold it to a Hollywood executive who parked it in the Geneva Free Port to accrue tax-free value. The aether through which art is passed stains it irrevocably, and art here is passed through power. The taxidermied racoon begins to blink, then twitch its stitched face. It claws at the clear edges of the plexiglass and tries to find someone, anyone’s, caring eyes. When it does not, it begins to cry. Tears leak down the fading fur and fill the hat to its brim. A final alchemy occurs, and the salty water transforms into formaldehyde, freezing the tear-struck animal, its performance forever halted. If you are reading this, leave the gallery. Now.

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Crowded Rooms, 2028

Tyler Moore

Telescope

One of Moore’s simpler, at least in appearance, spells. Viewers are asked to press an eye against a golden telescope built by the artist. In doing so, they find themselves looking at the back of their head. Viewers see themselves from a raised distance, roughly two to three feet above and behind themselves. Startled by the suddenness of being outside their body, they stumble back. We have placed an attendant nearby to prevent injury. The effect of the spell lasts anywhere from thirty seconds to a full minute, and is often disorienting, and what the gallery description won’t tell you is that if you keep your eye against the eyepiece and do not reel from the shock of it, you will continue to rise. You will ascend like a helium balloon, phase through the roof of this building, above the city, watching its neon veins shrink beneath you until you are hung over the Earth like a satellite. You will see how small all this is, the love, the devotion, the sin, the agony, the ruin, and you will know for a moment—I have made it so—that nothing matters at all, not really. Yet, you will not care. You will be absent a body, a city, a nation, absent even a planet and still you will find yourself thinking about groceries, your mother’s leathered hands, the neighbors barbeque wafting over his fence, the laughter of your children, your allergies in early March, and you will want very much to return to it. You will rescind into your body and gasp. Perhaps you will hate this gallery for trying to deny you its true beauty, for pulling you away with that attendant if you linger too long, under the auspices of safety. Perhaps you will begin to understand why I’ve done this.

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Finale, 2029

Tyler Moore

Air, light

A square skylight in the gallery’s center lets a column of light spear into the room. When viewers enter the column, they are surrounded by rapturous applause, and a feeling that the applause is both for them and well-earned. Viewers often swell with pride. There is very little aesthetic or material substance to this spell, and assessors have not been able to ascertain the actual source of its magic, and yet in its simplicity, its message is profound: Look, I’m going to be honest about this one, I made it as a joke about how the art world, while pretending to excavate truths, or shine bright lights on the dirty underbelly of the world, or whatever is all just navel gazing. Do you know why I never released these works in life? Because I loved them. Anything I loved I wouldn’t let within a thousand feet of a Museum of Modern Art. Still, money talked to friends. I knew it might. Which is why in concert these five spells contain another. I hope you are gone, but if you aren’t, look at the other plaques in this gallery.

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Gelmeroda IV

Lyonel Feininger, 1915

An artist so transfixed by one cathedral he spent decades creating dozens of painted interpretations of it. A testament to beauty. Purchased for $2,000,000 by an Enron executive because his ex-wife was born near the Church and had been collecting them before their separation. Crass, jealous, oil-stained money. It will burn.

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Long Distance,

Man Ray, 1916

An ode to geometry and color. A perfect stripping down of things to their essence. Purchased by a holding company in Denmark. In six months, when it is taken from this gallery, it will be put back in a wooden crate. It will burn before then.

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Vertical Accents,

Vasily Kandinsky, 1942

I see a world within this. A dreaming newness, cresting from the horizon. The scaled, contained present, and the wavering, possible architecture of the future. He’d weep, if he saw the dreary bleakness that’s formed instead of this. The gallery owner, who’d recently accepted this as a donation from a dictator’s son, thanked the sovereign nation as she hung it on the walls. Guests sipped champagne and complained about taxes. It will burn.

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Arson, 2050

Tyler Moore

Flames, Canvas, Oil, Acrylic, Wood, Air, Glass, Sand, Linoleum, Ceramic, Concrete, Paper, Insulation, Everything, The whole building now on fire. This, my final piece. This burning, singeing, end.

I’m sorry it came to this. This spell is all I have left that cannot be claimed by them. I hope you’ve left. I hope the building’s as empty as the souls of its curators. I hope not a single hair on any living thing is harmed. I hope they weep come morning. I hope you weep, too, at what’s been lost. Just know, it was lost long before my magic claimed it. It was lost the moment it was hung here. I hope my art lives on in the only way that matters. I hope my old lover still holds his scarred hand from time to time. I hope it burns.