The concept artist and sculptor Matt Mullican can be called an exceptional artist. Since the seventies, he has been working consequently on systematizing his highly subjective view of the world, his own universe and imaginary world. In his works, Mullican has created a sort of private language by dealing with every-day signs, pictograms and pictures surrounding us, supplied by his fantasy's products. He succeeds in doing this through repetition, contexts and mutual references. Mullican's multimedia oeuvre seems to break any manageable frame. Encyclopaedical, utopian, universal, cosmological are only a few terms suitable in this context. Basing on a highly complex texture of pictures, nevertheless, he succeeds in depicting an increasingly fragmentary global culture which he does by using united artistic media.
The consequence and the internal logic can be deduced from his earliest works: for instance Coloured Light Patterns (1972/73), coloured panel paintings reminding of Gerhard Richter exploring the difference between shining and reflecting colours; the so-called Bulletin Boards (1974), arranged panels with collages made from photos, pictures and texts like pin walls; or the Stick Figures (1973/74), where he invents the life of Glen, the match stick man. In Doll or Dead Man (1974) and the expressive Birth to Death List (1973), the artist reflects upon life and death, one of his central subjects.
Although not perceptible at first sight, his less known performances, carried out under hypnosis since the late seventies, play a fundamental role concerning his oeuvre's genesis. They make clear that his cosmology has an emotional origin and starts exploring perception by his own body. Repeatedly, the artist implores the "Going-into-the-picture", which is an important part of his performances and essential for understanding Mullican's oeuvre. Entering other worlds by his performances under hypnosis, the artist is admitted to the universality; or in other words, he intrudes into the mysteries of life, he implores the primeval human questions about God, the world, heaven, hell, life, death.
During the mid seventies, due to the experiences from his early works, Mullican has elaborated eminently abstract concepts for human life using cosmological diagrams and charts as well as groups of pictograms, titled Charts. He has succeeded in showing parts of his work Charts in a large variety of picture media. Thus the signs appear in groups of motives, engraved in stone, in windows composed of coloured glass, relieves cast in artificial stone, or on flags and banners. Since the mid eighties, Mullican sketches models and plans of imaginary cities. Mullican's cities are maps as well as layouts and encyclopaedical charts. They are abstract prototypes, attempts to appropriate systematically to the world, by using all sorts of methods and instruments, from simple charts to advanced computer animation. Through its nearly megalomaniac complexity, Mullican's oeuvre contains a strange melancholy moment, which finally exposes the modern man's impetus to classify the world as a utopia.
Regarding this oeuvre, a description of single works would not say much, these works can only be understood in connection, a connection accomplished by repetition, rhyme, links and signs: "The works form a constantly expanding semantic texture; his work is a unique symbol."1
In this very case, a special project offers an exception. In 1995, it was created within the noted Berlin's artists' programme DAAD and represents a remarkable confrontation of his works in the secure, institutionalized space of the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin on the one hand, and in the public space of the Alexanderplatz station on the other hand. Mullican refers to the meaning of the respective place, in one case by dealing with the special architecture of Mies van der Rohe, in the other case by using his pictograms in a transit area which depends on an internationally understandable communication system formed by signs and symbols.
Profile:
Born in Santa Monica, USA, in 1951. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts in 1974, afterwards in Valencia, Spain. In 1990, he was a visiting professor at Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. He lives and works in New York.
Exhibitions (selection):
Solo Exhibitions: 2005 Museum Ludwig, Cologne / 2003 Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich; De Singel, Internationaal Kunstcentrum, Antwerp / 2001 Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; Kunstverein St. Gallen Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen; Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld; Museion, Bozen; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel / 2000 Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna; Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto; The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford / 1999 Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich / 1997 Stedelijk van Abbemuseum (with Lawrence Weiner), Eindhoven / 1996 Museum Friedericianum, Kassel / 1995 Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin and Bahnhof Alexanderplatz, Berlin / 1994 Secession, Vienna; Kunstverein, Hamburg / 1992 Galerie Metropol, Vienna / 1991 Kunststichting De Appel, Amsterdam; Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo / 1990 List Art Center, M.I.T., Cambridge, Mass.; Portikus, Frankfurt/Main / 1989 Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC / 1988 Museum of Modern Art, New York / 1984 Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva / 1978 The Kitchen, New York / 1976 Artist Space, New York / 1973 Project, Inc., Boston.
Group Exhibitions: 2004 Global World/Private Universe, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen / 2003 Mapping a City: Hamburg-Kartierung, Kunstverein, Hamburg / 2002 Der Larsen Effekt. Prozesshafte Resonanzen in der Zeitgenössischen Kunst, Casino Luxembourg Forum, Luxemburg and O.K. Centrum für Gegenwartskunst Oberösterreich, Linz (2001) / 2001 Digital Printmaking Now, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn / 2000 Orbis Terrarum, Museum Plantin-Moretus and Surroundings, Antwerp / 1998 Artranspennine98, Tate Gallery, Liverpool / 1997 Dokumenta X, Kassel; Lost in Space, Kunstmuseum, Luzern / 1996 Under Capricorn, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam / 1995 Pittura/Immedia, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum and Kunsthaus, Graz / 1992 Documenta IX, Kassel; Transform: Bild Objekt Skulptur im 20. Jahrhundert, Kunsthalle and Kunstmuseum, Basel / 1989 Image World: Art and Media Culture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York / 1987 L’Epoque, La Mode, La Morale, La Passion, Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Skulptur Projekt Münster, 1987, Münster / 1985 Made in India, Museum of Modern Art, New York / 1982 Return to Artists Space, Artists Space, New York; Documenta 7, Kassel / 1981 The Kitchen, New York.
Publications (selection):
DC: Matt Mullican: Learning from that Person’s Work, Cologne 2005; Matt Mullican: More Details from an Imaginary Universe, Turin 2000; Matt Mullican: Works 1972-1992, Cologne 1993.
Illustrations:
Performance: Under Hypnosis, The Kitchen, 1982
Untitled, 1990
Courtesy Matt Mullican
1) Marianne Brouwer, „Die Taten des Herkules“; in: Matt Mullican: Works 1972-1992, Cologne 1993, p. 18. |
