Juxtapoz Magazine – Bridget Mullen has “Sensory Homunculus”

Shulamit Nazarian is happy to present Sensory Homunculus, an exhibition of new paintings by New York-dependent artist Bridget Mullen. This will be the artist’s next solo exhibition with the gallery, on check out from January 7 via February 10, 2023. Known for paintings that blend decisive mark-generating with experimentation, Mullen’s intuitive apply conjures psychedelic compositions that oscillate in between abstraction and figuration.

For Sensory Homunculus, the artist introduces a dialogue on the “problem” of portray, the evergreen discourse on the role of interpretation in art, inviting writer Lara Mimosa Montes as her respondent.  Addressing the statement to her peer, Mullen’s dialogue serves as an invitation to take into consideration painting’s ambivalent potential—those distances in between painting and artist, observer, entire body, world—as the place for reflection. 

In these paintings there might be nervous, ecstatic, exasperated, snarky, gnarly eyes eyes at a tipping stage, eyes fifty percent open up but only searching in. There may well be large shoulders like soccer players’ pads beefing up a physique or shielding a facial area. Bird’s eye, mind’s eye, face-to-confront, head-on, out-of-body issue-of-check out. Some designs have attributes that make them seem to be nameable, and some designs are nameable but just there for their properties. A painting could be like a body map with sections distorted in proportion to the pitch of sensation held at that component of the entire body. Unnaturally lengthy arms, monstrous palms, bulging eyes. A sensory homunculus.

Paintings begin with wild traces, layered plaids, or abstract designs, then I repurpose all those abstractions, or the spaces involving the abstractions, as figures. A several of these is effective started with a want to articulate a somatic experience so loud and persistent that painting human body elements inside out appeared the only response. The objective is to run feelings by the impediment program of my approach and use the transmutative abilities of painting to mirror again an creation that resonates.  

A painting feels like a frontier. It’s not every little thing outside of you, it is the certain house between you and anything or another person else—an adaptive, hopeful room. It’s like what’s between imagined and when language erupts, or when get hold of or emotion makes blood bolt to your skin’s surface, blushing, language adjacent, unspoken.

Language should not resolve the “problem” of a painting. What is the trouble? —Bridget Mullen