A Lecture in Three Parts, Which Picture Feels the Most Pain

A Lecture in Three Parts, Which Picture Feels the Most Pain uses a variety of media to illustrate and diagram some of the central concerns of Matt Mullican’s practice.

Matt Mullican

For over three decades, New York and now Berlin-based artist Matt Mullican (b. 1951, Santa Monica, CA) has created a complex body of work concerned with systems of knowledge, meaning, language, and signification. Mullican has always been concerned with the relationship between perception and reality, between the ability to see something and the ability to represent it. Mullican’s oeuvre, which takes form as drawing, collage, video, sculpture, performance, and installation, confronts the nature of subjective understanding, rationality, and cognition—in essence proposing a ‘picture’ of the world.

Mullican currently has solo exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst, Munich and Galerie Daniel Blau, Munich. Upcoming exhibitions include solo shows at Tracy Williams Gallery, New York in 2011 and Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp 2012. Important exhibitions include: Pictures Generation: 1974-1984, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 2009 (cat.); Matt Mullican: A Drawing Translates the Way of Thinking, The Drawing Center, NY, 2008 / 2009 (cat); Matt Mullican: Model Architecture, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, 2006 (cat.); Matt Mullican: Learning From That Person’s Work, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, 2005 (cat.); Matt Mullican: Details from an Imaginary Universe, Fundação Serralves, Portugal, traveled to: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England; Foundació Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, Spain; Kunstverein St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld, Germany; Museion, Bolzano, Italy (cat.). Mullican has participated in Documenta X, 1997, Documenta IX, 1992, and Documenta VII, 1982, Kassel, Germany, as well as the Skulptur Projecte, Munster, 1987.