Matt Mullican
10 Jun - 11 Sep 2011
MATT MULLICAN
Organizing The World
10 June - 11 September, 2011
The work of matt mullican (born 1951, santa monica, usa) focuses on the meaning of life and the world order, which he tries to grasp and make visible in his spatially invasive installations. mullican sees each object, each person and each phenomenon (or their depiction) as part of the universe and as a universe in itself. he is convinced that all that exists has a meaning that can be understood from a concrete context and can be depicted in an ordering system. this world view dovetails with the immoderate as well as unfulfillable claim to collecting everything that exists, systematically recording it, and thus giving the world that surrounds us a structure. scientific methods like ordering into categories, taxonomies and encyclopaedias are typical of mullican's approach: over a period of 30 years of artistic creativity, he developed a colour and sign system that claims to literally integrate and depict each and every human mood, experience or activity. but mullican's ordering of the world does not only apply to the obvious and the concretely perceivable, but also refers to phenomena that escape our waking awareness: suppressed aspects of reality that can only be accessed with the help of trances or hypnosis. thus matt mullican became known not only for his work in the visual arts, but also for his performances that he gives while under hypnosis. the works he creates complete his model for the world – a subjective cosmology in which everything is interdependent and allows us a very surprising point of view. the exhibition shows a selection of mullican's works that are especially important for the development of his opus since the 1970s and places the rarely shown early installations in context with later developments. a colour tunnel of monochromatic banners was created for the external façade of the haus der kunst. it corresponds to mullican's colour system, green, blue, yellow, black, red.
Organizing The World
10 June - 11 September, 2011
The work of matt mullican (born 1951, santa monica, usa) focuses on the meaning of life and the world order, which he tries to grasp and make visible in his spatially invasive installations. mullican sees each object, each person and each phenomenon (or their depiction) as part of the universe and as a universe in itself. he is convinced that all that exists has a meaning that can be understood from a concrete context and can be depicted in an ordering system. this world view dovetails with the immoderate as well as unfulfillable claim to collecting everything that exists, systematically recording it, and thus giving the world that surrounds us a structure. scientific methods like ordering into categories, taxonomies and encyclopaedias are typical of mullican's approach: over a period of 30 years of artistic creativity, he developed a colour and sign system that claims to literally integrate and depict each and every human mood, experience or activity. but mullican's ordering of the world does not only apply to the obvious and the concretely perceivable, but also refers to phenomena that escape our waking awareness: suppressed aspects of reality that can only be accessed with the help of trances or hypnosis. thus matt mullican became known not only for his work in the visual arts, but also for his performances that he gives while under hypnosis. the works he creates complete his model for the world – a subjective cosmology in which everything is interdependent and allows us a very surprising point of view. the exhibition shows a selection of mullican's works that are especially important for the development of his opus since the 1970s and places the rarely shown early installations in context with later developments. a colour tunnel of monochromatic banners was created for the external façade of the haus der kunst. it corresponds to mullican's colour system, green, blue, yellow, black, red.