14 Nov 2008

Matt Mullican at The Drawing Center

The Drawing Center is pleased to present 'Matt Mullican: A Drawing Translates the Way of Thinking' in the Main Gallery. Featuring over 100 works from throughout his artistic career, including never-before-seen drawings, notebooks, rubbings, video, and mixed media installations, the exhibition will be the most comprehensive of Mullican's work in drawing in the United States to-date.

For over three decades, Matt Mullican has created a complex body of work concerned with systems of knowledge, meaning, language, and signification. Ranging from schematic diagrams and arcane symbols to explicit text-based drawings, installations, and self-created cosmologies, Mullican's work classifies, orders, describes, maps, and represents an understanding of the world, using drawing to collapse the division between subject and object.

Since the 1970s, Mullican has conducted performances and created drawings under hypnosis to investigate the nature of the subjectivity and identity. Mullican's practice ultimately confronts the nature of subjective understanding, rationality, perception, and cognition – proposing a 'picture' of the world articulated through the medium of drawing. This exhibition is curated by João Ribas, Curator, The Drawing Center.

Matt Mullican was born in 1951, in Santa Monica, California and currently lives and works in Berlin. He received his B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1974. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Europe. Recently, his work was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2005); Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2005); and Museu Serralves; Porto (2000). Mullican's work is the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at the STUK Kunstencentrum in Leuven, Belgium (traveling to De Appel, Amsterdam and Haus der Kunst, Munich).

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Drawing Center will publish a 120-page edition of the Drawing Papers. 'Drawing Papers 82: Matt Mullican: A Drawing Translates the Way of Thinking' will include a conversation between the artist and exhibition curator, artist's writings from his 1970s notebooks, and approximately 60 color illustrations.

There will be a free Gallery Talk on Friday, November 21 at 6:30 pm with curator João Ribas in dialogue with Matt Mullican.

In addition, The Drawing Center will present a series of rarely-seen videos from the past 30 years featuring performances by the artist under hypnosis. Each screening will be introduced by a brief conversation between João Ribas and curatorial assistant Rachel Liebowitz. Seating is limited and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.


Thursday, December 11, 6:30 pm
'A Lecture/Performance with Hypnosis,' The Kitchen, New York, 1981

Wednesday, January 7, 6:30 pm
'Performance Live - Under Hypnosis,' Culturgest, Lisbon, 2006

Wednesday, January 14, 6:30 pm
'Performance Live - Under Hypnosis,' Anton Kern Gallery, New York 2002

Saturday, January 24, 4:00 pm
'Performance Live - Under Hypnosis,' Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, 2006