Accompanies the gallery exhibition of the same name, February 26–April 4, 2015
Sourced by the artist from period magazines and found-photographs, Mull’s loaded images are divorced from their original editorial or domestic context and are painted freehand onto canvas. Incongruent juxtapositions, accentuated by the use in lush color and harsh grisaille, form an open-ended allegory with no moral posturing. The aim is to inform and question, but never to pass judgment. Mull’s interest is in “the object of the image itself”—how an image’s ontology changes given its context. The contexts that Mull creates allow for duplicity of meaning, at moments equally despairing and beautiful, hopeful and horrid.
In the work of Martin Mull, nothing is fixed; the nostalgic slips into the contemporary, the safe becomes the subversive. To support these ends, Mull exploits the elasticity of images and their meanings. Ideas and implications shift under the viewer’s gaze as the images of our recent history resonate portentously.
The catalogue is soft cover, 28 pages, with 14 full-color illustrations and text by Frederic Tuten.
ISBN 978-1-937941-05-5 Use the following PayPal link for domestic (U.S.) catalogue orders. For international orders, contact the gallery.
