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During the month of September, the Rena Bransten Gallery will present new paintings by Martin Mull in an exhibition called "A Boy's Life." A catalogue will accompany the exhibit with text by Glen Helfand.
In this excerpt from the catalogue, Helfand describes Mull's new body of work. "The images in Mull's painting tell the story of an American life, that of one child who was raised in a specific time and place...He lived in a Midwest informed by MGM's fantastical Kansas, one of many Hollywood-created landscapes filled with iconic visual and narrative elements aimed to convince an entire country that there's no place like a Caucausian middle class home."
The work is rendered in abstracted landscapes that contain realistic imagery of human figures and Americana motifs. Characters, often mimicking members of Mull's family, are shown as cartoon figures interacting with human beings styled in 1950's attire. The menacing figures are juxtaposed against suburban homes nestled amongst perfectly manicured greenery. The tension between the objects is further accentuated by the use of a darker palette and a broader application of pigment for shadowing.
Mull was raised on a farm in Western Ohio and attended the Rhode Island School of Design for both his BFA and MFA. His work is included in many museum collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. He currently lives and has a studio in Los Angeles, California.
Click here for Martin Mull's biography.
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