Matt Mullican
02 Sep - 14 Nov 2015
Exhibition view: Matt Mullican. The Meaning of Things.
ProjecteSD, Barcelona, 2015.
Photo: © Roberto Ruiz
ProjecteSD, Barcelona, 2015.
Photo: © Roberto Ruiz
MATT MULLICAN
THE MEANING OF THINGS
2 October - 14 November 2015
Developed over the past four decades, Matt Mullican's work can be considered one of the most influential contributions to contemporary art in recent years. Systematization, structure and order of his personal vision of the world, ranging from personal and universal, are central themes in his production. His works do not function as isolated pieces; his understanding is based on the relationships established between them, within his whole body of work. Relationships established through language and signs, through repetition, rhythm and association. All his works form a continuous semantic unit.
Since the late 70s, the performances made under hypnosis have played a key role in his work. They have been the basis for, as the artist himself has stated repeatedly "entering the picture" see the world or an "image" of it, exploring the border between fiction and reality, a way of stating the relationship between the subjective and the objective and an essential tool for the development of all its
production.
For his fourth exhibition in ProjecteSD, Mullican presents his new work The Meaning of Things, an installation of more than 600 collages on paper that the artist has developed over the last five years.
Through a file of digital images of movies, video games, sports and multiple situations of violence, sex and empathy that the artist has been gathering in an intuitive and automatic way, he builds a repertoire where his encyclopedic, visual and graphic universe unfolds inexhaustibly.
Through this work, Mullican introduces models of understanding reality, the individual, his life and death and the mediated perspectives with which we understand all things. "It is not the world that you see is the world that I see representing the world you see." Mullican questions the representation from a philosophical and metaphysical point of view. The world then becomes a map of
signs and meanings that make us reflect on the different mechanisms of knowledge through the image.
The cosmology of The Meaning of Things is a way to decode what is around us. Through symbols, Mullican lets us see in each collage his interpretation of the subjective with different points of views. “World framed" and "world unframed”, the world as an image, and the world as a sign and map and the world built in abstract elements. As in previous works, it is possible to put ourselves in a first person and second person perspective as well as an omniscient observer as a way of understanding the expression of the world in which we live and its constitution, from the inner vision of our own subjectivity.
Along with the exhibition in ProjecteSD and within the Barcelona Gallery Weekend program, Mullican will present the performance That Person Will Be Talking at Nivell Zero of the Fundació Suñol, Saturday October 3 at 18:30 h Matt Mullican was born in Santa Monica (California) and currently lives and works in Berlin. He received his B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1974 and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe. Recent shows include: That World/Ese mundo, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico, Books representing Books, Kunsthalle Mainz, Mainz, Germany (2014-2015), Matt Mullican, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Brussels, Belgium (2015), MCA, Chicago, USA, The Venice Biennale (2013), Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2012), The Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany (2011), S.T.U.K Kunstencentrum in Leuven, Belgium (2009), The Pictures Generation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S. (2009), For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat that isn't There (ICA, London, Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, U.S., De Apple, Amsterdam and Culturgest, Lisbon, 2009-2010), The Whitney Biennial (2008), A Drawing Translates the Way of Thinking, The Drawing Center, New York, U.S. (2008). During 2016 Mullican will present an important solo show at The Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. Mullican's two solo institutional exhibitions in Spain so far were held at the IVAM, Centre del Carme in 1995 and at the Fundació Tàpies in 20
THE MEANING OF THINGS
2 October - 14 November 2015
Developed over the past four decades, Matt Mullican's work can be considered one of the most influential contributions to contemporary art in recent years. Systematization, structure and order of his personal vision of the world, ranging from personal and universal, are central themes in his production. His works do not function as isolated pieces; his understanding is based on the relationships established between them, within his whole body of work. Relationships established through language and signs, through repetition, rhythm and association. All his works form a continuous semantic unit.
Since the late 70s, the performances made under hypnosis have played a key role in his work. They have been the basis for, as the artist himself has stated repeatedly "entering the picture" see the world or an "image" of it, exploring the border between fiction and reality, a way of stating the relationship between the subjective and the objective and an essential tool for the development of all its
production.
For his fourth exhibition in ProjecteSD, Mullican presents his new work The Meaning of Things, an installation of more than 600 collages on paper that the artist has developed over the last five years.
Through a file of digital images of movies, video games, sports and multiple situations of violence, sex and empathy that the artist has been gathering in an intuitive and automatic way, he builds a repertoire where his encyclopedic, visual and graphic universe unfolds inexhaustibly.
Through this work, Mullican introduces models of understanding reality, the individual, his life and death and the mediated perspectives with which we understand all things. "It is not the world that you see is the world that I see representing the world you see." Mullican questions the representation from a philosophical and metaphysical point of view. The world then becomes a map of
signs and meanings that make us reflect on the different mechanisms of knowledge through the image.
The cosmology of The Meaning of Things is a way to decode what is around us. Through symbols, Mullican lets us see in each collage his interpretation of the subjective with different points of views. “World framed" and "world unframed”, the world as an image, and the world as a sign and map and the world built in abstract elements. As in previous works, it is possible to put ourselves in a first person and second person perspective as well as an omniscient observer as a way of understanding the expression of the world in which we live and its constitution, from the inner vision of our own subjectivity.
Along with the exhibition in ProjecteSD and within the Barcelona Gallery Weekend program, Mullican will present the performance That Person Will Be Talking at Nivell Zero of the Fundació Suñol, Saturday October 3 at 18:30 h Matt Mullican was born in Santa Monica (California) and currently lives and works in Berlin. He received his B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1974 and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe. Recent shows include: That World/Ese mundo, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico, Books representing Books, Kunsthalle Mainz, Mainz, Germany (2014-2015), Matt Mullican, Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Brussels, Belgium (2015), MCA, Chicago, USA, The Venice Biennale (2013), Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2012), The Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany (2011), S.T.U.K Kunstencentrum in Leuven, Belgium (2009), The Pictures Generation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S. (2009), For the Blind Man in the Dark Room Looking for the Black Cat that isn't There (ICA, London, Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, U.S., De Apple, Amsterdam and Culturgest, Lisbon, 2009-2010), The Whitney Biennial (2008), A Drawing Translates the Way of Thinking, The Drawing Center, New York, U.S. (2008). During 2016 Mullican will present an important solo show at The Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. Mullican's two solo institutional exhibitions in Spain so far were held at the IVAM, Centre del Carme in 1995 and at the Fundació Tàpies in 20