Matt Mullican

Museion, Bolzano
Through November 25

Californian Matt Mullican is currently exhibiting a range of works, from 1972 to date, at the Museion in Bolzano, in what is his first solo show in an Italian public space. Having started in Porto and passed through Barcelona, Oxford, and Krefeld, this will be the exhibition’s last stop.
More details from an imaginary universe.

To bring this imaginary world to life, the artist establishes various classifications, each distinguished by a different symbol, into which he fits all the elements. Mullican uses symbols with simple outlines—straight lines and circles—in simple colors—the three primaries in combination with black and white.

They are conventional symbols—such as the highly stylized figures from road safety signs, the globe marked with the lines of longitude and latitude, “no-smoking” signs—or others that he invents himself, such as the profile of a man with a hollow skull. Such elements can be seen, for example, in the “Banners and Flags” that hang about the main streets and buildings of Bolzano.

In the next stage, Mullican composes a complete vocabulary from these symbols: they form the alphabet of this new language, used to represent the world. Instances of this can be observed in the frottage pieces of his Dallas project, in which larger forms are filled by various black-hued marks, and in his 1987 lists, which order the symbols according to similarity of shape, “Connections,” and of meaning, “Definitions.”

For his 1991 piece Five into one, the artist utilizes architecture; starting with a plan, he makes his way through plastic, to finally reach digital simulation. In this way, Mullican creates entire cities starting, as always, from the simplest of outline shapes and most primary of colors.




Mariella Rossi