Matt Mullican

Untitled (Learning from That Person's Work: Room 1)

2005

Installation of ink on paper collage mounted on twelve cotton sheets, wood, cable, and video component (color, sound)

Not on view

Since 1977, Mullican has been working under hypnosis, which he considers a way of breaking the patterns of everyday life, in an effort to examine his subconscious. In this altered state, Mullican becomes someone he refers to as "that person": an ageless, genderless being that is a passenger inhabiting his body. In public performances, that person makes artwork while talking to himself through a haze of hypnotically induced intoxication or psychosis.
Untitled (Learning from That Person's Work: Room 1) is a large-scale manifestation of that person's activity. This disorienting, maze-like installation consists of twelve parts, in which bed sheets are covered with nine collaged ink-on-paper drawings. An accompanying video brings that person—mumbling and humming to voices he hears as the water fills and drains from a bathtub—directly into the installation. This immersive environment invites viewers to step into the wild terrain of Mullican's subconscious—and that person's reality.

Gallery label from

Sites of Reason: A Selection of Recent Acquisitions, June 11–September 28, 2014.

Medium Installation of ink on paper collage mounted on twelve cotton sheets, wood, cable, and video component (color, sound)
Duration dimensions vary upon installation; 12 units, each: 109 x 88 1/2" (276.9 x 224.8 cm); video: 14 min., 4 sec.
Credit Acquired through the generosity of the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art and the Friends of Contemporary Drawing
Object number 269.2014.a-m
Department Drawings and Prints

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