It's In the Title: Who Needs Muscles If Nothing Is Heavy?

A PREVIEW OF BRIDGET MULLEN'S UPCOMING SOLO SHOW IN LOS ANGELES

By Saša Bogojev

Who Needs Muscles If Nothing Is Heavy? I love how abstract yet valid this question is. I also find it a fantastic title for an exhibition, particularly one of works that feel odd, unresolved by traditional standards, and therefore highly subjective to read and understand.

Putting words to Bridget Mullen’s paintings always felt like a downright impossible task, and the same goes for her fourth solo with Nazarian / Curcio in Los Angeles. Taking shape through a process that is highly improvisational, intuitive, and nonconforming, the organically evolved paintings are best described as abstraction growing elements of figuration (or figuration dissolving into abstraction). Working with flashe on linen, the Brooklyn-based artist makes the most of the medium’s exceptional opacity and chroma, as well as its matte, light-absorbing surface. As such, they’re often described as psychedelic, feeling overwhelmingly complex and rich, as if capturing a tipping point of an unknown event. It feels as though, in an imaginary timeline, things would look drastically different only seconds after the moment we observe them.

Utilizing celebrated, boundless, (almost) zero-constraint artistic freedom, they’re difficult and very subjective in terms of enjoying or interpreting them. Built through a process in which Mullen lets her tools and materials decide the next steps, her work ranges wildly in featured colors, shapes, and compositions. This is where the title comes into play. Thinking of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's idea that the qualities of the world are inseparable from the bodies through which we experience them, things appear or feel significantly different depending on our subjective reference point. In other words, our experience and preference construct this reference point, creating an illusion of a "standard" or "common sense." So, in order to shatter this and give the viewer a clean slate before experiencing the work, Mullen cunningly resets the cognitive setup by wondering, Who Needs Muscles If Nothing Is Heavy?

—Saša Bogojev