ART CITIES:N.York-Jill Mulleady

Jill Mulleady belongs to a young generation of artists who are keenly aware of the long shadow cast by the history of painting, yet remain committed to the medium as a means of exploring new spaces of potentiality. She is concerned with the principle of mutability, and often appropriates the context where her work will be exhibited.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Whitney Museum Archive

In “We Wither Time into a Coil of Fright”, the ninth work in a series of public art installations of Whitney Museum,  Jill Mulleady presents a surreal landscape populated by multiple figures in a scene she has described as a sort of “dance.” Though the figures are clustered close to one another by the riverbank, they appear disconnected—even self-absorbed. Suggesting that contemporary life is simultaneously hyper-connected and ultimately isolating, Mulleady heightens this dynamic through the lush, natural surroundings present in the scene. Without the protection and surveillance of the built environment, are these figures more free, more vulnerable, or both? Through her moody use of color, Mulleady further emphasizes this notion of existential isolation, an idea that she has revisited repeatedly in her work and sees as prevalent in this era of digital technology and the ubiquitous smartphone.  Jill Mulleady is perhaps best known for her representational painting—frequently large-scale—that combines real and invented subject matter, while often reflecting on the history of painting. A recent cycle of paintings references the work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, using this as a creative springboard for her surreal world-making, and ultimately proposing the possibility of the co-existence of multiple temporalities in a single composition. Combining this nod to history with decidedly contemporary references, Mulleady acknowledges the acute realities of our current world with what she sees as a moment plagued by both vulnerability and angst.

Info: Curator: Jane Panetta, Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, Duration: 2/3-Sept 2020, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:30-18:00, Fri 10:30-22:00, https://whitney.org