johnny g mullen: Rehearsals of Movement

Peninsula is pleased to present Rehearsals of Movement, the second solo show of painter johnny g mullen with the gallery.

In this latest series of paintings, johnny g mullen de-emphasized color, choosing to focus on his use of smaller brushes and the resulting thinner, more precise marks left upon the canvases. Through this seemingly minor alteration in his process, the entire visual language of his paintings were completely altered. Within this latest series, motions become less broad and minute details are drawn into starker focus. Slender lines rendered on the canvas hum with an unsettled, agitated energy, coiled, fragmented, and overlapping. The brushtrokes undulate and disperse across the painting, accumulating in corners in unpredictable ways. The uneven coalescence of the mark making creates alternating pockets of hyperactivity and stillness. Smaller, individual “statements” form within the painting, existing as their own moments while still participating as part of the whole piece. According to mullen, “my desire was - I guess - to achieve the idea of description, more like detailing and slowing down time, rather than these sweeping statements that would go from one edge of the canvas to the other…. I just felt like I didn't really need that sensation. I was so much happier to get across there, in a much slower fashion - possibly a more methodical fashion- and that gives the surface a totally different kind of energy.” In his own words, these recent paintings are “more expressionistic” than his previous works, taking light inspiration from the CoBrA Movement and early forms of American Abstract Expressionism.

This evolution of mullen’s newest body of work began within his drawings, which are inner thoughts and raw Id made manifest. His frustrations, urges, and desires are translated into motion and given form within these compositions. From these works on paper, mullen crafts his paintings. At times, a single painting can reference multiple of these drawings as he grapples to find an internal dialogue and cohesion within the works. Through this process, mullen improvises with himself, a messy process he likens to getting lost in traffic or composing lyrical prose. Carefully crafted plans and ideas can go to the way-side in an instant, a casualty of the struggle between control and pure impulse. According to mullen, “Like poetry, you write a few lines, and as you're writing, you're groping towards what the meaning of all this language -as it were- could go, and it can be a variety of ideas that are presented. But then, ultimately, you're left with one sensation. You're left with one concept and meaning.” Through turmoil, he gives untamed forms direction, a structure to exist within.