Article in Santa Fe Reporter, by Liz Brindley

Matthew Mullins gets back to nature

And totally goes with the flow

June 14, 2017

By Liz Brindley

Walk into any gallery on Canyon Road and you’ll likely encounter a landscape painting: stunning vistas, expansive skies, expensive prices. After a while, the subject is worn out. When artist Matthew Mullins moved to Santa Fe, he told himself he was not going to paint landscapes, but now that’s the main focus of his work.

“When I moved to New Mexico, I was aware of landscape painting’s presence in Santa Fe,” Mullins says in his greenhouse studio as rain lightly patters on the windows. “I didn’t want anything to do with it—it felt too safe. I was resistant to being influenced by the landscape. But then it became inevitable.”

Matthew Mullins, Ridge, Oil on canvas

A few years ago, Mullins was creating an array of intensely photorealistic watercolors depicting museum basements and scientific storage facilities, drastically different environments than what he depicts today. Mullins tried to hold onto this practice when he arrived in the Southwest, but ultimately found it was forced. The landscape’s call was too strong, and he had to shift gears. Mullins let go into the flow of new creative tides and began painting his surroundings.

But his interpretations do not follow the traditional trail of landscape paintings. Rather, they dive into an abstract realm where barriers of stark white geometric lines cover the canvas and act as protectors of natural spaces. This veil of patterns is inspired by human design seen in quilts, tiles, tapestries—anything created by hand.

“In these paintings, I combine two disparate things,” Mullins explains. “The geometric pattern and the natural landscape. I want the pattern to help the landscape and the landscape to help the pattern to ultimately bridge the divide and make it as harmonious as possible.”

Matthew Mullins, Caldera, Oil on Canvas

The layered composition of opposing forces makes our brains stumble for a moment as we try to make sense of what is going on. Mullins wants viewers to let go of the desire to “figure it out” and surrender to the visual experience.

“The pattern prevents instantaneous answers,” he says, “but if you give it even three seconds, your brain will start to make some sense of it—and that’s not a lot to ask, but it’s more than a lot of people are willing to give.”

Close observation reveals the natural world embedded into the process. Mullins incorporates a variety of elements into his paints including slate, zinc and nickel.

“I’m really into rocks. They have this special earth energy that we pick up on somehow; I usually have a rock in my pocket,” he shares, pulling out a reflective black stone. “Today I have a meteorite.”

This admiration for different elements of the earth recently led the artist to shift into sculpture. Furthering ecological exploration, Mullins collects gnarly chunks of wood and coats them entirely with graphite. This meditative exercise releases the human construct of time and falls into the natural rhythm of process.

“I like to get into these flow states, these trance states, where you’re really involved in the process,” he says. “With these sculptures, it’s just doing the one thing. It’s a simple process, but it’s a very focused process. You have to be really aware of every ridge of the wood to care for its delicate nature.”

Matthew Mullins, Tripod, Graphite on Found Wood

By the time the process is complete, what was once a recognizable section of wood looks charred and mechanical, an appearance that radiates a futuristic feeling and grates against our traditional notions of nature. These sculptural works beg to be touched, but instead sit silent on white gallery pedestals, frozen in time as projected future preservations of the present moment.

As for the future of Mullins’ artwork, he says he doesn’t have an exact plan. “I want to be surprised by the art process,” he tells SFR. “It’s like crossing a river with stepping stones. I’m only thinking about the next stone.”

Mullins’ landscapes are currently elevated on the walls of form & concept (435 S Guadalupe St., 982-8111), because sometimes that is what it takes for an everyday subject to be respected and seen. On view as part of the gallery’s one-year anniversary exhibition through Oct. 22, Mullins’ hope for his pieces is that people will take time to slow down, let the visual patterns wash over them, and leave with a greater awareness of nature.

Anniversary Show at form & concept by: Kelly Skeen

An initial observation of one of Matthew Mullins’ recent paintings leaves us feeling confronted and even mystified as our eye battles with a barricading pattern in order to perceive the image behind it. As we push and pull our vision past lines and vertices, through narrow spaces and under obstructed views, we prolong our looking and begin to piece together a landscape, fragmented yet whole in our perception. As our mind toggles back and forth between imagery and abstraction we’re forced to reengage with the landscape and soon find ourselves shifting from simple observation to visual meditation. “Ultimately, you’re getting to that place beyond seeing or looking and just experiencing,” says Mullins. “After a while your brain makes sense of it, so that feeling of frustration you experience on the first look has gone away by the third.”

Matthew Mullins, Sun Mountain, Oil on Canvas, 30" x 40" (76cm x 101cm)

Once our mind falls into the rhythm of the composition, its overlaid pattern guides us across the landscape as each repetition of shapes corresponds with the imagery beneath it. In Pink Pine, the pattern’s vertices and star shapes are aligned with key points on the snow-covered tree, illuminating its natural form and orienting our perception to encounter every detail of the serene image. In Silver Summits, triangular patterns follow pointed peaks and steep planes across a mountain ridge, while horizon lines provide spatial orientation of a summit ridgeline in Sun Mountain.  These pieces and more will debut this month at form & concept’s One-Year Anniversary Exhibition, opening Friday, May 26 from 5-8pm.

Matthew Mullins, Pink Pine, Oil on Canvas, 40" x 30" (101cm x76cm)

Since his inaugural exhibition with form & concept last October, Mullins has honed his techniques with precise patterning and intentional compositions while loosening his painting style with layers of oil rather than watercolor. In addition to creating eight new paintings for the show, Mullins has recently developed a three dimensional body of work that tangibly embodies the interaction between human consciousness and natural forms. In their first public display, wood and graphite sculptures will compliment the artist’s paintings in this month’s exhibition.

Detail of new graphite and wood sculpture.

Graphite on Wood: Collaborating with Earth, Sun and Wind

Several of Mullins’ paintings are made with natural pigments including graphite, slate, mica, nickel and chromium to cultivate a direct connection with the natural world. As the artist was painting trees and other landscapes with graphite, it occurred to him that these natural shapes could be similarly embodied in three-dimensional form. The idea clicked during a hike on Atalaya Summit in Santa Fe where Mullins took a small piece of natural wood home with him and began to experiment. Through a labor-intensive and transformative process Mullins imbues graphite into the surface of the wood, which burnishes away superficial layers of loose dirt and fibers. This gritty, physical endeavor distills the wood down to its most elemental form, drawing attention to every textural detail that has grown over time or been shaped by natural elements such as fire, water and wind. Our reaction is similar to the felt experience in front of Mullins’ paintings; we first encounter the artist’s hand and evidence of human consciousness, which causes us to reengage with the piece and examine every illuminated detail of its natural form.

Studio Visit Interview and Video, by: Form and Concept

“When we moved here, I was so excited that I’d be working in a greenhouse,” says Matthew Mullins. “There’s so much light, and also the possibility of actually growing some things in here.” He’s tending to the small jungle that occupies one corner of his home studio, just off Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Surrounding the real greenery, there’s a series of mixed media paintings that echo the natural patterns of the plants. Matt starts by painting a landscape or natural detail in watercolor, and then overlays a human-made pattern—like a quilt or tile design—atop the natural scene using acrylic ink. Then he works back and forth, sharpening details in the scene or strengthening the pattern in a compositional push-and-pull. “I’m really focusing on the interconnection between humans and nature,” Matt explains. “The patterns, they’re kind of like our filters of how we’re interacting with nature. It’s a metaphor for the connections of humanity and nature.”

Matthew moved to Santa Fe in 2011 from Berkeley, California. He spent most of his childhood in the Bay Area, and attended Sonoma State University and the University of California, Berkeley. “When I was at UC Berkeley getting my MFA, I was around all these archives and labs and machinery,” he says. His fascination for hidden corners of the school’s research libraries inspired a series of photorealistic watercolors of stacked books, dusty typewriters and tangled scientific equipment. Now, he paints fragmented nature scenes and mandalas of the cosmos. In this Q & A, we spoke with Matthew about his transition to New Mexico, how the landscape has transformed his artwork, and his current inspiration.

When did you first start working with watercolors? 

My first painting class was a watercolor class at a community college in the Bay Area. I loved it, and really connected with it right away. It was during a period where I wasn’t necessarily planning on being an artist. I was going to school to be a chiropractor, and taking a lot of science classes. The art class was really where my heart was. I took beginner’s and advanced watercolor classes, but when I went to Sonoma State I started painting with oil and acrylic. I didn’t really touch watercolor again until I got to grad school.

I started using watercolor again because […] I wanted to force myself into a really fluid medium, and practice being looser and painting the whole composition at once through layers rather than piece by piece. Once I started getting into that, it felt like that was the way to paint. I was able to get into these painting flows much better, rather than a really punctuated process of doing these little sections. With the watercolor I can just have my palette there, and the paint doesn’t really dry out the way that acrylic does. I can just be there for hours, painting and getting into this really great flow, which is why I paint.

Tell us about your progression from photorealistic watercolors to natural scenes with bold, abstract patterns. 

That transition in style had a lot to do with what I was doing in my life, and where I was. The archives and more photorealist work, I was doing when I was in grad school in Berkeley. I think that kind of environment lead me to these places that are repositories for all of this information. It was all of these artifacts that kind of embody peoples’ work and knowledge, and the human body of knowledge growing. 

Then when I moved to New Mexico, I was going outside all of the time, spending a lot of time in nature. I’ve always had an interest in science, and when you look at plants or stars, there’s these patterns and systems, and there’s this organization at every level—macro to micro. There’s some sort of organization and pattern. There’s also chaos, but there’s some sort of predictability or way that these things are being organized.

Matthew Mullins, Chicoma, Watercolor and Acrylic Ink, 58" x 38"

How did moving to New Mexico change the way you look at the world? 

It was a big shock, with the amount of space. I think one of the bigger surprises was how far you could see, and how crisp everything is when you see it far away. In Berkeley when you’re looking over the water, which is pretty much the only place where you could have a far vista, everything gets really diffuse pretty quickly from all the fog in the atmosphere. All the colors get muted and turn gray. Here it’s crisp 40 miles away, a real vista. My palette got much more vivid after moving here. 

Did you start painting the landscape right away? 

At first, I was resistant to change. Being aware of the art history in Santa Fe and predominant styles around here, I didn’t want to paint landscapes. I wanted to avoid all of my preconceived notions of what I thought art in Santa Fe was. So I was pretty stubborn at first, like, “I’m going to paint these archives and these machines. This is what I do. I’m not going to really be influenced by what’s around me.” Then I couldn’t help being influenced by what’s around me.

My initial watercolor studies [of the New Mexico landscape] were monochromatic. I was painting monochromatically because I was really teaching myself how to paint the landscape. I had never really painted landscapes that seriously before. I was painting a lot of machinery and human-made things before. With all of the edges and the way the light works, it’s much harder to paint the landscape. The monochrome made it easier because I was only working with value and form rather than color relationships as well. Once I dialed that in a little bit better, then I started incorporating color. I love color and I want to use a lot of it, so the monochromatic stuff was just practice.

When you discuss your influences, you often reference photographers as well as painters. How does photography influence your work? 

I look at a lot of photography, and there’s a lot of photographers that I really like. Andreas Gursky is a big influence, for all of the detailed information that’s in those photos. All of my paintings start from photography, but they’re my own shots. I treat it mostly as a tool to get to the painting and to be able to record nature and bring it back into the studio. It’s the first step to kick the painting off, kind of like a sketchbook.

It usually starts with light or something that just catches my eye. Then I might get my camera out, and from the camera lens I’ll start composing. I don’t really compose in my mind that much. I just go after what catches my eye and then look a little closer.

Matthew Mullins, The Creation of Iron, watercolor and blood on paper.

n your mandala series, The Creation of the Elements, you incorporate unconventional materials into the works, like a drop of blood or a bit of copper. Tell us about the conceptual reasoning behind that. 

With the blood, it was a surprise. I wasn’t planning that until the very end. I started that painting working from the outside in. I was like, ‘How is this going to resolve?’ When I was getting close to the middle, I was thinking that stars are where all of the elements are created except for hydrogen. Everything more complicated than hydrogen is created inside of a star. I was thinking that the iron, copper and the elements in my body are actually made in stars. I wanted a human connection to that.

In your works that blend human-made patterns with natural scenes, you use watercolor and acrylic ink. What are some differences between handling those two mediums? 

The acrylic ink is much riskier than the watercolor. The second it goes on, it stains and you can’t really get it off. With watercolor, you can kind of loosen it up and dab it out and lighten it. It still stains the paper a little bit, but not like acrylic ink. With the ink, every little waver of your hand is recorded. I like how it records that detail, and it makes it waterproof so when you go over it with the next layers it doesn’t smudge or soften up.

I just try to get into a flow. I don’t focus too much on making the lines perfect, I just try not to second guess myself. Once I start slowing down, I start editing too much. The paintings are really structural and I could get bogged down in all the details, but I want to not be too strict on myself and just roll with the process.

What are you working on next? 

I feel like I’m just getting started [with these series]. There’s three different avenues to go down with this work. I’m just pushing the snowball down the hill, and I feel like everything I’m doing can take on a lot more. The deadline of this show, and the excitement of getting my work out of the studio has lit a fire under me. 

The Artist's Process by: Kelly Skeen

The Artist’s Process

by: Kelly Skeen

From intimate works on paper to large-scale canvases, the bulk of Matthew Mullins’ work begins with layers upon layers of acrylic ink and watercolor that form a realistic under painting of a natural environment. The artist then begins to obscure the image with a human made pattern, maybe found from a folk tradition or a tiling manual, allowing the two elements to intersect and mingle on the paper or canvas in an intuitive way. A mystical grove of pine trees, a serene lake, or a majestic mountain landscape is imbued with a construct that has been filtered by mankind. The result doesn’t create clash or controversy; it realizes harmony as a visualization of the unified web to which we all belong.

Matthew Mullins, Pines (Blue), Acrylic on canvas over panel, 16" x 12"

“My work draws upon my fascination with visual perception and the forces of nature,” explains Mullins in his artist statement. “By integrating human made constructs with natural environments, I’m composing a relationship that is often deconstructed or forgotten in today’s society.”

Matthew Mullins, Ridgeline, Watercolor on Paper,  60" x 40"

This process allows for risk taking and ambiguous experimentation, an exciting prospect for the artist. The permanence of the medium stimulates Mullins as he progresses through a piece, obscuring parts that could have taken hours to complete. As the acrylic ink immediately stains the paper, Mullins is inspired by the sense of risk in that moment. The piece continues to build and shift with each layer of ink, and is finished with watercolor to soften the hard edges of the acrylic. See this process embodied in Chicoma, Aspen & Pine, Nebula, and Annie, among others.

Matthew Mullins, Chicoma, Acrylic Ink and Watercolor, 58" x 38"

Mullins dives deeper into the literal connection between humans and nature with a series of mandala pieces called The Creation of the Elements. These cosmic watercolors take us out of our typical earthly view and into an environment similar to the one in which we were created. The starry sky imagery recalls the origins of our universe and subsequent formation of stars through hydrogen gases and cosmic dust. Many of the elements in our own physical bodies were created in this process; as a testament to this, Mullins finishes each piece in the series with a resonating artifact such as a drop of blood, or a small piece of copper, paying homage to the original integration of natural forces and our physical selves.

Matthew Mullins, The Creation of Copper (Pleiades), Watercolor and Copper on Paper, 24" x 24"

Mullins also experiments with collage, drawing inspiration from crazy quilts, and has a traditional landscape watercolor series. He began these works on paper as a way to deepen his skillset for painting the natural scenes in his patterned work. To learn more about Mullins’ process and life in the studio, follow his Studio page and connect with him on Instagram and Facebook. You can also see his finished work on display at Form & Concept in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Matthew Mullins, Grizzly Peak, Berkeley, Graphite Drawing, 19th Century Lithograph,  Watercolor and Acrylic on Paper, 20" x 16"

Blurring the Lines between Art and Craft by: Kelly Skeen

Matt Mullins’ artistic blend of human design and the landscape most significantly

represents our integration with the natural world. However, there is another theme

that emerges from his combination of human-designed patterning and the artistic

rendering of nature, which is the visual collaboration between the realms of art,

craft, and design. This interconnection is in direct alignment with the mission of

Form & Concept, a gallery in Santa Fe’s Railyard Art District that is breaking

preconceived distinctions between these disciplines.

“I think we’re one of the few galleries that looks at craft from an overview,” says

Frank Rose, Form & Concept’s gallery director. “We want to insert craft, design, and

technology into the art conversation and explore their interrelationships. We don’t

view these genres as separate from art, and we’d like to encourage others to view

through this lens.”

The gallery has supported this overview through rotating exhibitions and temporary

artist residencies, and has recently announced they are now acquiring four stable

artists whose work also embodies this vision. According to Rose, Mullins was a quick

choice for representation as an artist whose career he’d been following from the

beginning.

“The interrelationship of human design and ‘natural’ design explored in Matt’s art is

a core expression of many craft-based works,” Rose explains. “I chose him to be

represented by the gallery because I believe in his work and want to see him

succeed as an artist.”

The overlaid patterns in Mullins’ paintings are derived from craft traditions such as

quilt making and tiling. By combining these constructs with landscape painting, he is

bringing craft and design into an artistically focused context, which motivates

viewers to consider connections between the art forms.

Matthew Mullins, Chicoma, Watercolor and Acrylic Ink, 58" x 38"

“With craft makers, there is often a preconceived idea of what the end result will be,”

says Mullins. “Art calls for more experimentation and intuitiveness. With my work, I

have a general idea of two aspects: the outcome of the pattern and the painting of

the landscape. The mystery then lies in the combination, bringing the two together.”

Form & Concept’s next opening will celebrate the four new artists, which in addition

to Mullins are Wesley Anderegg, Heather Bradley, and Heidi Brandow. The event will

take place on October 28th, 5-7pm in the gallery’s upstairs mezzanine. View the

event on Facebook and Form & Concept’s website.

Landmark Show at the Center for Contemporary Art

I'm honored to have been selected among the 28 artists for the Landmark Show at the Center for Contemporary Art's Munoz Waxman Gallery.  The exhibition examines contemporary mark-making in the landscape.      

“Several themes emerge from this exhibition, perhaps mostly views of our current ecology--documentation of our marks on the land, land use, and the fractured reality of utopian visions. However, artists have also used their skills to work toward a different ecology, one that involves remediation and sustainability, even a different perspective on our humanity. The artists in The Land Mark Show navigate these territories of the arid West, as we think about drought and climate change like no other time in our present history.” - Juror Grace Kook-Anderson

The show will be up until January 2016. 

Visit to Chaco Canyon

I recently visited the 1000 year old ruins at Chaco Canyon, in a remote area in Northwestern New Mexico.  To get to the ruins you drive about 20 miles down a dirt road, under an expansive sky with faraway horizons punctuated by mesas.  I saw a group of horses that may have been wild as I was nearing the ruins.

Chaco Canyon has the densest concentration of ruins in the American Southwest and is among the best examples of ancient Puebloan architecture.  It is also among the least understood.

This is a very special place.  The stillness, being alone in such a desolate location and being one of only two people in the entire canyon created a sense of solitude and timelessness.  But, I was also overcome with a sense of presence and human life.  Walking and standing amongst the millions of stones laid down by human hands over a thousand years ago was much like standing in front of brushstrokes in a painting made long ago.  I could sense the makers of these impressive structures by contemplating the labor and decision making involved in the placement of each individual stone, much like one can sense a bygone painter by standing in front of a painting (where they stood while making it) and contemplating the individual brushstrokes and decisions that comprise the painting.  It is a way to connect with the spirit of human life, but from a different time and place.  

The builders of Chaco Canyon are known for their advanced knowledge of astronomy and aligned many of the structures at Chaco Canyon with celestial events.  Best known is the Sun Dagger, a grouping of petroglyphs that track both solar and lunar cycles.  Other petroglyphs at Chaco Canyon depict the Supernova of 1054.

Being there creates a broader sense of time than one has in day to day life.  Out there, it feels like millennia can go by like minutes. 

"Sky" at the Bedford Gallery

One of my paintings will be included in the Sky exhibition at the Bedford Gallery, in Walnut Creek, California.  

Rings, the painting that I am showing is an 18" x 18" watercolor painting, depicting stars in deep space.  It is a circular painting, made up of concentric rings of triangles, that alternate between warm and cool black and culminate to a point in the center of the circle.  I painted it like a mandala, working from the outside towards the center.  My source photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The show will be open from March 9 to May 21, 2014.   

"Teleharmonium" at Zane Bennett Contemporary

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art is pleased to present three solo shows running concurrently: Matthew Mullins large scale watercolors of spaces that are associated with human endeavor and curiosity, Mary Shaffer’s glass sculpture capturing the essence of light, and Tony Soulie’s mixed media photographs of American cities.

Album Cover for James and Evander's "Constellating"

I designed this album cover for James and Evander, an Oakland, CA based "stoner future pop" musical duo.  I used an engraving from the 1840's to create the image.  

James and Evander (Adam and Glenn) are making a letterpress print for these album sleeves.  They are really nice! (Both, the prints and Adam and Glenn).  Both, the image and the text are embossed on thick cotton paper.    You can hear their music here.  Have a listen!

Moving to New Mexico!

I'm looking forward to new beginnings in the Land of Enchantment!  

"Systems of Collecting" at the Kala Art Institute

Review by DeWitt Cheng in the East Bay Express 

Review by KQED Arts                                                                         

I will be showing a few paintings in Systems of Collecting, at the Kala Art Institute.  The other artists in the show are Mari Andrews, Binh Danh, Jeanne O'Connor, Ethan Turpin.  Systems of collecting was curated by Lauren Davies.  

"Kala Gallery presents Systems of Collecting, the second in our three-part 2011 series that explores various aspects of systems structures. This group exhibition visually explores organizational systems that are used in libraries, archives, private collections and natural history/anthropology museums. To seek, locate, acquire, organize, catalog, maintain and display - these actions comprise the very definition of collecting. Ranging from eccentric personal collections stored in labeled boxes in the basement to formally displayed natural history taxidermy collections, uniqueness and variation within a category appear as the predominant organizing principal of collecting. Yet beyond these activities, an essential aspect of collecting is about imposing order on the chaos of life. The ordering of the world around us seems to be guided by the need to simultaneously preserve and control. The work presented in Systems of Collecting examines both the light and dark sides of the collecting impulse....

.....Matthew Troy Mullins is a recent MFA graduate from University of California, Berkeley whose work meshes his impressive skills as a realist watercolor painter with his longstanding fascination with public and private collections, archives, and storage facilities. Matthew’s selection of subject matter pairs densely packed information laden situations with a watercolor painting process that by its very nature, is both loose and fluid. His large-scale paintings on paper depict collections of objects that are tangible representations of a collective story. Matthew was the recent recipient of the Visions from the New California award that provided a two-month residency at Kala’s studio."  (Full text here)

"Here and There" at the Townsend Center

I will be having a show, called "Here and There" at UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center.  The show opens February 16, from 5:00 – 7:00.  The show will be up until May 15.  Stop by if you can make it.  The Townsend Center  (220 Stephen’s Hall) is near the center of campus, next to the clock tower.

This is the text from the Townsend Center's press release:

 "Matthew Mullins’s large scale watercolor paintings feature private collections, archives and storage facilities, mostly associated with the natural sciences. Fascinated at the amount of material they house, Mullins envisions these spaces as giant curio cabinets housing the souvenirs of people and experiences we’ll never know. For Mullins, everything from the treasured artifacts housed in climate controlled basements to the everyday detritus left in storage lockers becomes a tangible representation of another person’s story, a link to another point in time, and an opportunity to connect to something outside of ourselves."

"Breaking Ranks" at the Headlands Center

I'm going to have a few pieces in this show at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

This is text from the show:  "Breaking Ranks in military usage indicates the movement among a group to fall out of line, allowing each person to go his or her own way. The Bay Area artists, performers and writers included in this annual exhibition each execute different tactics to investigate the contested division between Nature and Culture. The diverse media in the exhibition, including drawing, painting, video, sculpture, and live performance, reveal the products and processes of culture as part and parcel enough of human nature to make culture at least second nature for humans everywhere."

"Breaking Ranks: Human/Nature," was curated by Brian Karl.

Visions from the New California Award

I am very happy to say that I am one of this year’s recipients of a “Visions From the New California” award.  The other artists who received this year’s award are:  Asad Faulwell, Joanne Hashitani,  Crystal Am Nelson, Anja Ulfeldt and Andre Woodward.

From the “Visions From the New California” website:

Visions from the New California celebrates, supports, and promotes the work of outstanding California visual artists from diverse communities – artists whose work may still be unfamiliar but whose compelling visions will define California in its next decades.

With the award came a one month residency at the Kala Art Institute and a very nice stipend.  This award is possible due to the Alliance of Artist Communities and the James Irvine Foundation.  Thank You!

New American Paintings

I'm pleased to say that a few of my paintings will be in the next issue of New American Paintings! (issue 91)  It will be out in early December, pretty much everywhere where art magazines are sold.  

"Brought to Light" at Martina}{Johnston Gallery

December 11th, 2010 to February 6th, 2011
Reception: Saturday, December 11th, 4 to 8 p.m.
Closing / Art Talk: Saturday, February 5th, 2011, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The Martina }{ Johnston Gallery is pleased to present Brought to Light, an exhibition featuring the films and installation of Rose Khor and the paintings of Matthew Troy Mullins.

The multiplicative effect of technology on humanity's instinct to collect and catalog has led the inhabitants of our computerized, postindustrial societies to think of information as something abstract, disembodied, replaceable and disposable. Using differing theoretical approaches and tools of art practice, Khor and Mullins explore the physical architecture of the archive, focus on the significance of the unique historical object and, in the process of creating artwork, reinvent their personal relationship to the forgotten articles of the endless catalog. Each of their work functions as a model of how to keep humanistic values alive in the face of the overwhelming.

Matthew Troy Mullins is exhibiting a current, ongoing series of large scale watercolor and gouache paintings on paper. To create this work Mullins researched and gained access to the private and semi-public archives of various museums and learning institutions around the Bay Area. Based on photographs from these sites, the images in his paintings hint at the awesome scale of these undertakings, while their free flowing, delicately meticulous, yet deeply felt rendering enables the viewer to connect to these overpowering products of human endeavor at an emotionally comprehensible level.

Down dimmed, climate-controlled corridors, the archive occupies row upon row of generic metal shelving, boxes stacked in towering columns, strictly labeled sets of drawers, and cabinets brimming with outdated media formats, suggesting that the Modernistic grid is the contemporary mode of being. But Mullins has taken down the boxes and opened the drawers to reveal the fascinating contents; with great care each is observed and passed along to us.

Stephanie Syjuco's Shadowshop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

I am very happy and honored to be one of the artists participating in Stephanie Syjuco's project, Shadowshop, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.   I contributed graphite and watercolor portraits made from facebook profile pictures.  I then made refrigerator magnets from those portraits and sold both at Shadowshop.   

Stephanie Syjuco (2014 Guggenheim Fellow) describes Shadowshop as, "A temporary and alternative store/distribution point embedded within the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's fifth floor galleries, Shadowshop will stock hundreds of artists’ multiples, small works, tchotchkes, catalogs, books, zines, media works, and other distributive creative output.

While operating as an actual mom-and-pop style store, Shadowshop is also a platform for exploring the ways in which artists are navigating the production, consumption, and dissemination of their work. Four themes (1. artwork-as-commodity, 2. cultural souvenirs, 3. bootlegs and counterfeits, and 4. alternative distribution systems) will contextualize selected projects that are both complicit with and also critical of capitalist circulation."

Open to the public November 20, 2010 to May 1, 2011, at SFMOMA

"No Right Angles" at the Berkeley Art Museum

The UC Berkeley MFA show is now open at the Berkeley Art Museum.  The show includes four of my paintings, as well as work from artists Miguel Arzabe, Bonnie Begusch, Amanda Eicher, Aliza Rand, Azin Seraj and Becky Suss.  The show will be open until June 20, 2010.

This is an excerpt from the show catalog, written by curator Dena Beard:  

"No Right Angles is an exhibition created by UC Berkeley's graduating MFA students.  Miguel Arzabe, Bonnie Begusch, Amanda Eicher, Matt Mullins, Aliza Rand, Azin Seraj, and Becky Suss weave a story about artistic production.  From unconventional photographic processes to community development projects, these seven artists challenge preconceptions about both the media and the motivations of art.  Thinking outside of the lines of traditional engagement, they open the practice to exciting new strategies of intervention and visual innovation.

......Matthew Mullins meticulously paints archives, libraries, botanical gardens, and other neglected sites of storage.  His meditations on his collective drive to research, catalog, and sometimes just accumulate are mysteriously emptied of human instigators, suggesting at once the function and futility of this motivation" 

Collaborative Painting with Azin Seraj

This watercolor and gouache painting was made by my good friend, Azin Seraj and myself.  It is 3 feet by 4 feet (92cm x 123cm), painted on paper.  I think this painting is a pleasure to stare at.  

 Weaving, Sol Lewitt and zen painting were influences for us.

Azin says this about our painting, "Our rule-based process for this painting went like this: 

Matt and I would both mix the darkest black color that we could, but using different pigments to make these blacks.  Matt made a cool black, I made a warm black.  We would try to get our colors to match as closely as possible, while knowing that there would be slight differences.

I would start on one side of the painting and Matt would start at the other, and we would both paint every other rectangle.  When we met in the middle, we would fill in the blank spaces left by the other person.  This would create a woven texture and create a metaphor for collaboration because it would take both of us working together to create each “woven line.”  We see the final painting as a “tapestry” made from two types of “thread”.

We would use up all of our paint in each session to create the near impossible challenge of recreating the same black color the next time we painted.  So with each painting session, the color would slightly shift, creating layers that looked a lot like geologic strata layers, the same kind of layers you would see if you cut a cross section out of a mountain."