Matt Mullican
06 Sep - 25 Oct 2008
Untitled (Lawrence Oliver mural), 1988, Acrylic, oilstick rubbing, left 4,42 x 4,20 m, middle 4,44 x 3,84 m, right 4,44 x 4,52 m
Matt Mullican
Subject Driven
6 September - 25 October 2008
Gallery Klosterfelde is happy to announce an exhibition with the American artist Matt Mullican (born in 1951, currently lives in Berlin). Entitled "Subject Driven", the new show is at the same time a continuation of and an antipode to the last gallery exhibition "Learning from that Person`s Work" which was a labyrinthian installation of bed sheets covered with drawings and collages made in relationship to hypnosis, a kind of controlled schizophrenia leading through the artist`s alter ego`s Psycho mind. More didactic and self-disciplined, the new installation focuses on Mullican`s theory of the 5 "Worlds" or subjects that have formed the background for his diverse working strategies throughout the last 35 years.
These five different subjects are models for a cognitive perception of the world by which the artist has tried to come to terms with the relation of the universe we live in and the representation of it. The five categories are the Elemental World (materials / physical elements), the World Unframed (everyday relation to our physical surroundings), the World Framed (the arts and symbolic awareness), the World of Language (signs, coded meanings), and the World of the Subjective (the psychological relationship to the world unframed and framed). The categories are represented by different colors and by a complex system of signs and symbols, diagrams and charts.
Using this 5-World model as the structuring frame for the whole installation of the show, the main gallery space has been divided in 5 differently colored areas with each corridor standing for a different world. The red, black/white, yellow, blue and green spaces are tightly filled with a multifarious selection of artworks from since the early 1970s, drawings and paintings, photographs and videos, stone casts and iron sculptures, flags, hypnosis drawings on linen, melted telephones and tables with glass objects. For the first time however, these works are not ordered according to their specific materiality but the positioning of the works was based on their subject only. Consequently, series of works are broken up, glass balls with drawings are to be found in different rooms, drawing sets are separated - it is a forced structure following not the context of the material but the subject of the sign, thus shifting radically the original contexts of the works towards a new, "subject-driven" ordering system, opening completely new perspectives on the works. In an almost manic attempt to categorize and to give new form to existing structures, the exhibition is an exciting journey through the artist`s encyclopaedic mind.
For further information or images please contact Dominique Wenzel at dominique.wenzel@klosterfelde.de
Opening of the exhibition: September 5th, 2008, 6 - 9pm
Duration of the exhibition: September 6th - October 25th, 2008
Gallery Hours: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11am - 6pm
Subject Driven
6 September - 25 October 2008
Gallery Klosterfelde is happy to announce an exhibition with the American artist Matt Mullican (born in 1951, currently lives in Berlin). Entitled "Subject Driven", the new show is at the same time a continuation of and an antipode to the last gallery exhibition "Learning from that Person`s Work" which was a labyrinthian installation of bed sheets covered with drawings and collages made in relationship to hypnosis, a kind of controlled schizophrenia leading through the artist`s alter ego`s Psycho mind. More didactic and self-disciplined, the new installation focuses on Mullican`s theory of the 5 "Worlds" or subjects that have formed the background for his diverse working strategies throughout the last 35 years.
These five different subjects are models for a cognitive perception of the world by which the artist has tried to come to terms with the relation of the universe we live in and the representation of it. The five categories are the Elemental World (materials / physical elements), the World Unframed (everyday relation to our physical surroundings), the World Framed (the arts and symbolic awareness), the World of Language (signs, coded meanings), and the World of the Subjective (the psychological relationship to the world unframed and framed). The categories are represented by different colors and by a complex system of signs and symbols, diagrams and charts.
Using this 5-World model as the structuring frame for the whole installation of the show, the main gallery space has been divided in 5 differently colored areas with each corridor standing for a different world. The red, black/white, yellow, blue and green spaces are tightly filled with a multifarious selection of artworks from since the early 1970s, drawings and paintings, photographs and videos, stone casts and iron sculptures, flags, hypnosis drawings on linen, melted telephones and tables with glass objects. For the first time however, these works are not ordered according to their specific materiality but the positioning of the works was based on their subject only. Consequently, series of works are broken up, glass balls with drawings are to be found in different rooms, drawing sets are separated - it is a forced structure following not the context of the material but the subject of the sign, thus shifting radically the original contexts of the works towards a new, "subject-driven" ordering system, opening completely new perspectives on the works. In an almost manic attempt to categorize and to give new form to existing structures, the exhibition is an exciting journey through the artist`s encyclopaedic mind.
For further information or images please contact Dominique Wenzel at dominique.wenzel@klosterfelde.de
Opening of the exhibition: September 5th, 2008, 6 - 9pm
Duration of the exhibition: September 6th - October 25th, 2008
Gallery Hours: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11am - 6pm