Matt Mullican

An Artist whose work is concerned with systems of

knowledge, meaning, language, and signification.
Mullican also works with the relationship between
perception and reality, between the ability to see
something and the ability to represent it.

Untitled (Learning from That Persons Work: Room 1) 2005

Installation of ink on a paper collage
Mounted on 12 cotton sheets, wood, cable and video
component.
(Colour, Sound; 14:04 min)
12 units each (109 x 88.5) installations dimension
variable.

The Art of Writing 2004-2005

The mural is comprised of 64 individual panels.
A vinyl template for each image, which is articulated as a
positive relief. The yellow canvas is then laid over the
template and rubbed by hand, with black oil stick.
The imagery of the template is thus transferred, via the
rubbing, onto the canvas.
25 x 74 dimensions
http://www.middlebury.edu/arts/campus/artexhib/matt_mul
lican_the_art_of_writing
This multi-volume anthology of articles and images
on a broad range of topics endeavored to catalogue
all of human knowledge, with an unprejudiced
respect for the mechanical arts as well as the
intellectual, or liberal, arts.
Since the 1970s Mullican has been experimenting
with hypnosis to create art that both examines his
subconscious, and functions as a strategy for
breaking from the patterns of everyday life.
Working under these hypnotically induced
intoxications or psychoses, Mullican becomes his
alter ego, what he refers to as that personan
ageless, genderless being that inhabits his physical
body. That persons reality is documented through a
series of performances wherein he draws, counts,
and writes with ink on large sheets of easel paper.

 Artist Jean Dubuffet called it pure and authentic

creative impulses influenced him and many of his
counterparts.
Over the years it has been used to categorize art
created by the mentally ill, the incarcerated, and the
formally untrained.
http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2014/06/12/tapping
-the-subconscious-the-hypnotic-art-of-matt-mullican
The work progresses with two main operating methods.
Cosmology based on the symbolism of representation
consists of a range of signs: photographs, pictograms,
diagrams, etc.
It generates a form of mental cartography consisting of
five distinct parts identified by their respective colour
references: green is for the elements, for nature and
also for death; blue is for the 'world unframed' by the
conscious, including the city and everyday life; yellow is
for the 'world framed' constructed by art and science;
black is associated with language and signs and red
refers to ideas, to pure spirit.