PRESENTATION: Marlon Mullen – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

Marlon Mullen’s kaleidoscopic paintings feature interlocking shapes of tactile paint that reference images found in art magazines from the library of his hometown’s NIAD Art Center (Nurturing Independence through Artistic Development), which hosts and supports artists with developmental disabilitis.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MoMA Archive

A strong formalist, Marlon Mullen’s paints precise shapes in bold swirls of vivid colors, creating topographical pools of paint and confident graphic lines that delineate forms that had formerly served to make an image. As he distills and reconstructs his references, the paintings come to withhold what one might consider vital information, prioritizing previously minor or overlooked details. “Projects: is the title of the first solo exhibition of Marlon Mullen’s work by a major museum, Marlon Mullen uses art publications and other print material as points of departure for his paintings, generating radical reimaginings of these sources in which text and image are transformed through his dynamic color and composition. Since 1986, Mullen has been based at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, California, a progressive studio for artists with developmental disabilities. Upon selecting a glossy cover or an interior page as a point of departure, Mullen paints using acrylic on canvas, flat on a table. He maintains visual ties to his source material, while also radically transforming it. The resulting compositions reimagine the relationships among their parts. Barcodes and other details may zoom into prominence. Letters, numbers, punctuation, and the spacing between them may disappear or repeat. Imagery and graphics all become pure form to be reordered and reshaped. With his uniquely rigorous manner of organizing the picture plane, Mullen upsets the expected hierarchy of elements in an image. Shadows move out from the background into the fore, stripes of a magazine barcode enlarge to become graphic scaffolding that provide movement and depth, while text is abstracted into imagery that performs an aesthetic or poetic function. On Mullen’s surfaces, the components are liberated from any purpose other than generating composition, gesture, and rhythm. Amidst these radical transmutations, the artist creates his own idiosyncratic universe that toggles gloriously between representation and abstraction. As this exhibition demonstrates, Mullen views magazines and art books not only as a prompt to create, but also as an invitation to engage with today’s art world on his own painterly terms. Mullen’s work is a contemporary exemplar of a centuries-old tradition of artists making art about art, an avenue of invention richly represented in MoMA’s collection. Taking the covers of art books and magazines as his subject matter, Mullen transforms them into dazzling paintings that bring him and us into the thick of today’s art world. The exhibition features 25 paintings from the last decade. From MoMA’s collection, two recent acquisitions are on view at the Museum for the first time: “Untitled” ( 2017) and “Untitled” (2016). The exhibition features other paintings from the artist’s studio and private collections, including many canvases inspired by Artforum and Art in America covers from the last 20 years. A new work inspired by the cover of the MoMA publication Van Gogh: The Starry Night is also shown for the first time. “On behalf of everyone at NIAD, it is an honor to work with MoMA to heighten visibility for Marlon Mullen’s practice and to open his first solo museum exhibition,” said Amanda Eicher, Executive Director of NIAD Art Center. “Working with MoMA’s curators, the Access Programs and Initiatives team, and the Museum as a whole, we celebrate this moment at which artists like Marlon Mullen are redefining contemporary art through partnership with the world’s most esteemed art institutions.”

Info: Curators: Ann Temkin and Alexandra Morrison, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 14/12/2024-30/4/2025, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri & Sun 10:30-17:30, Sat 10:30-19:00, www.moma.org/