Matt Mullican “Sunday, August 9, 1908”

Matt Mullican “Sunday, August 9, 1908”

Peter Freeman

This event has ended.

Sunday, August 9, 1908
Is the title of my exhibition at Peter Freeman opening on
Thursday, March 2, 2023
I have been using comic images in my work since 1973. I was interested in the details of the comic image and I cut out parts of comic books depicting the physical elements of water, air, gravity, food, light, beds, cars, shadows, etc.
I was interested in depicting
The parts of that world that
Support life in the pictured world.
This became
Details from an Imaginary Universe.
I was interested in entering the picture.
Also in 1973 I was experimenting with light patterns and light sources.
The differences between the light patterns as perceived in comics and real life seemed arbitrary.
If all I see are light patterns where is life within those patterns?
Little Nemo in Slumberland was in the New York Herald on Sundays from Oct 15, 1905 – July 23, 1911 by Winsor McCay
Nemo’s world was in his dreams and at the end of every page Nemo would wake up, mostly by falling out of bed.
The page that my show depicts is from August 9, 1908.
There are 12 frames in the story
It starts with an invitation to have breakfast. Nemo and his friend are served by Nemo’s mother (in Slumberland). A kind of oatmeal was served and Nemo and Flip noticed that they were getting fatter and heavier!!
The more they eat the heavier they get! Next the furniture collapses! And pretty soon they are falling thru the floors of the house.
The entire picture plane is collapsing falling apart, becoming abstract, deconstructing!! This is in 1908!! Cubism, abstraction and fauvism all happening far away from the Sunday funnies in the USA. Also all of this deconstruction was happening in a dream!!
So pointing towards surrealism!
I’ve added two elements to each frame.
1st
16 circular details of each picture in exactly the same location as in the big picture.
2nd
I changed the color in every outlined area creating an abstract pattern. This relates to the idea of
“All I see are light patterns”
Both the details and light patterns refer to aspects of the work going back 50 years!
Thus making this show a kind of an anniversary.
Happy birthday, Glenn!
– Matt Mullican, 2023

Peter Freeman, Inc. presents Matt Mullican’s fifth solo show with the gallery, his third in New York in addition to two previous shows at our Paris location, featuring a new series of paintings and drawings.

Matt Mullican (born 1951, Santa Monica, California) earned his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 1974 and has since exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States. He recently had a series of retrospective exhibitions presented by the Possehl Foundation in Lübeck and was the recipient of their 2022 Possehl Prize for International Art. Other solo exhibitions have been held at the Musée des Arts Contemporains au Grand Hornu, Belgium; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Skulpturenhalle, Neuss, Germany; Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; and Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. Mullican’s work can be found in the collections of several major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Matt Mullican lives and works in Berlin and New York.

Media

• Painting
• Drawing

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