Nikko Mueller
Loose Ends
May 14 - June 18, 2022
Loose Ends was an exhibition of a new body of work by artist Nikko Mueller that included several folded and pleated paintings on canvas and a large-scale fiber-based sculpture.
My work applies evocative processes to fundamental motifs and forms. I employ the formal language of color and geometric abstraction with its implication of order and platonic ideal. I then disrupt these institutions through a process of folding, re-ordering the relationships, then patching fractures, restoring forms, and finding uneasy compromises. In “Mutually Inconsistent,” the initial composition of stripes becomes irregular and disjunctive as I re-stretched the canvas into pleated folds. The tension of the canvas on its frame becomes exaggerated horizontally, while its vertical pull goes slack. For “Between two parentheses”, I collected clothes from friends in Philadelphia where I’m from, LA where I lived for over a decade and finally SD where I am currently. The piece sprawls the gallery floor like a giant serpentine body pillow - placid in places, twisted and writhing in others. Each opening attaches to another opening; neck holes consume pant legs, armholes intersect waistbands, dress bottoms join shirt bottoms, past connected to present. In all of these works, the solutions I seek are provisional and partial, tentative and tense. As I attempt to connect edges, blend transitions, and repair movements, issues of representation and abstraction intersect in a pictorial space oscillating between literal and illusory.
Nikko Mueller (b. 1977 in Philadelphia, PA) explores patterns and systems, particularly in situations where they are subjected to transformation and flux. His work in various media apply the strategies and processes of abstract painting to address how we locate ourselves and extend our perspectives in unstable circumstances. He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. Mueller has had solo exhibitions at Angles Gallery in Santa Monica, Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles, Southwestern College Art Gallery in Chula Vista, and the Athenaeum in La Jolla. He has had numerous group exhibitions at art venues throughout the United States including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, Honor Fraser, Green Gallery West, Quint Contemporary, Dust Gallery, R.B. Stevenson Gallery. Mueller is a Professor of Art at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. He currently lives and works in San Diego, California
