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Nikko Mueller: I’m OK, You’re OK
Josef Albers ascribed a mortal character to color when he claimed it “behaves like man.” Believing that the relationships between colors are analogous to human behavior, he viewed the interaction of color as an ethical andaesthetic phenomenon, a perception-based form of “color action” where visual experience is active and transactional. Like Albers’ seminal color studies, the paintings and sculptural works that comprise Nikko Mueller’s exhibition I’m OK, You’re OKinvestigate the relational potential of geometric abstraction and the sentient nature of color.
In Mueller’s work, color is both medium and subject, text and character. Hallmarks of Greenbergian modernism are present in his paintings—an emphasis on formal properties, the assertion of the two-dimensionality of the picture plane, and self-referentiality. Yet, instead of playing along with Greenberg’s formalist theory, Mueller throws a wrench into things: he disrupts and deforms the sanctified flatness of the painting ground by folding the canvas. It is here, upon manipulated folds of linen, canvas and burlap, that Mueller’s abstracted, highly colored shapes and forms “act”—doubling, intersecting, overlapping, vying for space, trying to sit quietly—on a painting surface that refuses to behave.
Mueller’s disruption of the painting support and emphasis on the physicality of his painting’s stretchers and canvases bring to mind the Supports/Surfaces group, a short-lived, loosely knit collective of French artists who, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, deconstructed painting by stripping it down to its intrinsic elements and foregrounding its materiality—its object-ness. Mueller assumes a similar approach in Wooden Leg, a freestanding sculpture sited directly on the floor in the center of the gallery. The core of the work is an open grid armature constructed from painted white pine that brings to mind Sol Lewitt’s seminal, modular balsa wood sculptures. Scaled to human height, one side of the wood framework supports a folded and slumping length of unprimed canvas that is imprinted with a brightly colored, loosely painted grid pattern that mimics, as the work’s title suggests, its wooden “leg.” Here Mueller dismantles and demystifies painting by transforming it into an image-object that lays bare its component parts: support, and surface.
The cheeky, passive-aggressive titles of some of Mueller’s paintings—See What You Made Me Do, Look How Hard I Was Trying—are taken directly from psychiatrist Eric Berne’s 1964 book Games People Play, a bestselling pop psychology text that introduced transactional analysis as a way of explaining human behavior. Applying game theory to social interactions, Berne outlined a series of “mind games” that people play with each other, consciously or not, that typically lead to counterproductive outcomes.
In Mueller’s paintings, the human protagonists of Berne’s transactional dramas are replaced by geometric forms—perky circles, sumptuous ellipses, spiky triangles, and drooping, bifurcated squares—that coexist and interact, oftentimes uneasily, within the confines of the picture plane. Mueller’s folded canvases serve as stages for the compositional machinations carried out by these anthropomorphized forms—they jostle, converge, isolate, enfold, conceal and kanoodle, a cast of characters whose personalities and interactions are framed within the dynamics and structures of abstraction.
While Mueller’s paintings openly engage in their two-dimensional power plays on the gallery walls, his conjoined and painted “weeded” books quietly punctuate the space. Their titles—Big Long Shot/Little Hedges, Problems, Decisions/Mask Magic, Irregular People/Structural Handbook—are eponymous expressions of their literal couplings, and also recall William S. Burroughs’ cut-up method, a form of literary collage in which a written text is disassembled and rearranged to create a new text. Placed singly and in groups on a series of plinths and pedestals, they are microcosms of their larger painted cousins, intimately-scaled Rauschenberg-esque combines that conflate written language and the language of abstraction.
In our socially and politically fraught moment, when disruption, division and distortion shape and frame our daily experience, the perpetual question on our collective lips is, “can’t we all just get along?” Through the lens of abstraction, Nikko Mueller’s paintings and objects suggest how relationships can adapt, persist, transform and, sometimes, evolve, in the face of profound change and destabilization. Taking in his exhibition at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library provides a temporary respite from existential mayhem, and affords us the opportunity—the gift—of losing ourselves, if only for a moment, in the unadulterated delight of visual experience.
©Kaytie Johnson, 2019
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Out of instability, artist Nikko Mueller strives to find stability
Artist Nikko Mueller
OCT. 17, 2019
5 AM
At first glance, Nikko Mueller’s abstracts seem like cheerful geometrics, bold patterns with carefully chosen colors. But a closer look reveals a deeper story.
The triangles, rectangles and circles are a bit off.
The canvases have been folded after the original pattern was applied, then stretched on the frame again to alter the shapes and change the narrative.
“How an underlying component changes relationships has been a longstanding interest of mine,” Mueller said. “I look at the mess that I’ve made — the problem — and how to find a resolution. It’s not about a new innovative response. I follow the same rules to make it coherent again.”
Those rules include a logical, pared-down design of shapes and the space they inhabit, as well as elements of color theory, which he teaches in drawing and painting classes as a professor at Southwestern College.
Mueller, who received his Master of Fine Art from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, moved to the San Diego from Los Angeles in 2013 to accept the teaching position. He started this series about two years ago. The disturbed shapes started as an analogy of where we are politically and historically, Mueller said. Over time, they became more anthropomorphic.
“Deviations are what make us interesting in the end,” he said. “I’m taking logical relationships and problematizing them. The canvas becomes more in play, more assertive.”
In the reshaped forms, Mueller started noticing human qualities. “The way they respond to transformation makes them feel human,” he said. The folds change the narrative, and some shapes seem to become dominant and others fade into the background. “It’s like they have different kinds of purpose.”
“The paintings,” he said, “are trying to get back to what was stable.”
Ten of his paintings, along with one piece mounted on a three-dimensional wood trellis, are on display at La Jolla’s Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in an exhibition titled “I’m OK, You’re OK,” taken from the 1960s self-help book. Mueller also gleaned the titles of the paintings from that book and the other popular ’60s self-help book “Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships.” Reshaped groupings of circles have names such as “See What You Made Me Do” and “You Got Me Into This.”
“I’m looking at structures of relationships. It’s hardly a deep dive into psychology,” Mueller said of his titles. He attributes his penchant for seeing connections in shapes to growing up with a mother who was a family therapist.
A few pieces were made specifically for the Joseph Clayes III Gallery, including the canvas on the shelf-like trellis, which mimics the Athenaeum’s windows and plays off the light in the room, which was designed by William Templeton Johnson in 1920.
The show also includes 3D pieces made with two books stuck together and then painted on the outside. Most of the books are feathered together through their pages and were paired by their titles. Mueller said he collects stacks of discarded books and then looks for moments that tie two together, such as “Longshot” and “Little Hedges” and a book on history paired with the “Last Best Thing.”
“It could be glib,” he said of the pairing, but “it extends to how we map our future.”
Mueller said he wanted to add the books to the exhibition “to have elements of words floating around.” The books, which were all created over the summer, make the exhibition more approachable, he said. Each set is also painted with geometric forms.
Mueller attributes is fascination with old and altered things to his childhood in Philadelphia in 1980s and ’90s when many areas were blighted. “I was used to seeing things in a compromised state. It fascinated me,” he said. For him, the transformation of an old mansion into apartments made the building magical.
“I’ve always carried Philadelphia with me,” Mueller said.
For a while, transforming his art included sandblasting the canvas. But, he said, with so much anxiety in today’s society “the assault on my work became too dark.” The new series is much more hopeful. “The paintings are trying to heal,” he said.
When: Through Nov. 2
Where: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla
Admission: Free
Phone: (858) 454-5872
Online: ljathenaeum.org
Schimitschek is a freelance writer.
October 16th 6:30-7:30
Athenaeum Music and Arts Library
1008 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
I will be leading a walkthrough of my exhibition on Wednesday evening in an event that is free and open to the public.
I’m OK, You’re OK
September 21st- November 2nd
Mueller’s current body of work continues hisconsideration of disruption, destabilization, and collapse.“I’m OK, You’re OK” employs the formal language of color and geometric abstraction with its implication of order and platonic ideal: an unobstructed nod to Frank Stella and Joseph Albers.
The show’s title is appropriated from Thomas Harris’ wildly popular self-help book on Transactional Analysis. “I’m OK, You’re OK” serves as substrate for Mueller’s investigation into how formal relationships adapt, persist, and deform/transform in the face of change. So often these outcomes are determined/dependent upon what wasand are marred by the memory of old patterns. Mueller is often seduced by the way crisp formal logic suggests transcendent ideas and elemental truths. But he also approaches these perceived truths with fundamental distrust.
As with the Support/Surface movement, Mueller’s formalism is informed by a political sensibility. The pieces examine and reconsider the underlying structures and dynamics of abstraction. They articulate not just nihilistic destruction but also a playful reconfiguring of Essentialist Art as an ill-fitted suit. Awkward compromises, provisional solutions, and ugly truths perhaps mirror the contemporary moment where everything seems to be orbiting a desire for some kind of classical ideal in a world that is too compromised to absorb the disruption.
Serious Topics
DREAMHOUSE VS. PUNK HOUSE
March 23 - September 29, 2019
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 23, 2 - 7 pm
Dreamhouse Vs. Punk House (plus Cat House)
Organized by Kristin Calabrese, Joshua Aster and Torie Zalben
March 23 - September 29, 2019
“The spirit of play is strong in LA.” – Anonymous
We each have our own ideas of house, home, structure, imaginative space. For Dreamhouse Vs. Punk House (plus Cat House), nearly 200 artists made perfect, small artworks to be shown in three highly decorated, 95-inch tall dollhouse towers.
The organizing principles were loose associations, lifelong acquaintances, new friends, artwork we’d love to own, the experimental and collaborative way that things happen in LA amongst artists – a think tank – an alternative to the daily grind of white walls and commercialism – artist run, pro artist, art forward. Let’s look and see!
Some inspirations include: Predator vs. Alien, Louise Bourgeois house drawings, James Castle structures, Barbie, America, the sixties, “Flowers in the Attic,” by V.C. Andrews, the 70s and the 80s, the present, art history, Hieronymus Bosch “Garden of Earthly Delights”, good vs. evil, which is which? Alice Konitz’ LAMOA, “Little Shop of Horrors.”… etc., doodles on napkins, and the wallpaper from the Magritte exhibition at LACMA.
These are the artists:
Aaron Axelrod, Abdul Mazid, Adam Miller, Adrienne Adar, Alice Könitz, Alison Blickle, Amada Claire Miller, Amanda Joy Calobrisi, Amy Adler, Amy Sarkissian, Andrew Falkowski, Andy Moses, Annabel Osberg, Anne Harris, Annie Lapin, Ariana Papademetropolis, Ave Pildas, Becky Kolsrud, Ben Jackel, Ben White, Bettina Hubby, Brad Eberhard, Brenna Youngblood, Brian Bowensmith, Brian Cooper, Caitlin Lonegan, Camilla Taylor, Carl Baratta, Carmen Argote, Carolyn Castaño, Charles Karubian, Charlotta Westergren, Chris Finley, Christian Haub, Christine Frerichs, Chung Park, Claire Chambless, Cole Case, Conrad Ruiz, Cyril Kuhn, Daniel Cummings, Dana Weiser, Danny First, Danny Shapiro, Darius Airo, Dave Muller, David Bronstein, Delia Brown, Denny Tentindo, Don Suggs, Doug Crocco, Dustin Metz, Eamon Ore-Giron, Elizabeth Tremante, Emily Joyce, Emma Gray, Eric Lebofsky, Eric Wesley, Faris McReynolds, Forrest Kirk, Fran Siegel, Frank Ryan, Frank Stockton, Georganne Deen, Heather Brown, Helen Rebekah Garber, Henry Taylor, Heriberto Luna, Hilary Baker, Holly Topping, Ian Trout, Iva Gueorguieva, Jane Goren, Jasmine Little, Jay Erker, Jayme Odgers, Jeni Spota C., Jennifer Rochlin, Jennifer Sullivan, Jesse Pace, Joe O’Neill, Joel Holmberg, John Mills, Jonathan Apgar, Josh Atlas, Joshua Aster, Joshua Miller, JP Munro, Julia Schwartz, Julia Sinelnikova, Juliana Romano, Kara Joslyn, Karin Gulbran, Karl Haendel, Katie Grinnan, Katie Herzog, Keith Mayerson, Keith Tolch, Keith Walsh, Kelly Berg, Kelly McLane and Jared Pankin, Kelly Neibert, Kenny Scharf, Kristin Calabrese, Krysten Cunningham, Kyla Hansen, Laura Krifka, Laurie Nye, Linda Stark, Lisa Adams, Logan Madsen, Lucas Reiner, Ludovico De Luigi, Margie Schnibbe, Mari Eastman, Marion Lane, Maripol, Mary Addison Hackett, Mary Anna Pomonis, Mary Weatherford, Matthew Fisher, Matthew Haywood, Max Jansons, Max Maslansky, Michal Kamran, Michelle Fierro, Michelle Grabner, Michiko Itatani, Mike Reesé, Mitchell Wright, Naotaka Hiro, Nathan Meier, Nasim Hantehzadeh, Ned Low, Nicholas Frank, Nicholas Shake, Nick Aguayo, Nik Irzyk, Nikko Mueller, Nikkolos Mohammed, Nina Bovasso, Opera Povera, Oscar Moreno, Patrick Woody, Paul Gillis, Paul Rusconi, Paz de la Huerta, Phyllis Green, Raffi Kalenderian, Rebecca Campbell, Rebecca Morris, Reed Anderson, Rema Ghuloum, Richard Hull, Rob Hill, Robert Fontenot, Robert Gunderman, Robert Russell, Rory Devine, Ross Rudel, Ryan Sluggett, Salomon Huerta, Samantha Fields, Sarah Awad, Scott Marvel Cassidy, Seffa Klein, Semra Sevin, Shana Lutker, Shiri Mordechay, Spencer Lewis, Stan Edmondson, Stephen Westfall, Stephanie Pryor, Steve Hurd, Steve Locke, Susan Logoreci, Susanna Coffey, Sydney Croskery, Tanya Batura, Tim Stark, Tom Allen, Tomory Dodge, Torie Zalben, Tyler Vlahovich, Vanessa Conte, Vera Milijkovic, Violet Hopkins, Zak Smith
Serious Topics is an artist run project space located at 1207 N. La Brea Ave., Down the Driveway, Inglewood, CA 90302. Gallery Hours are Monday through Friday 2 – 6 by appointment ONLY.
Email DreamhouseVsPunkhouse@gmail.com for appointment.
Our mailing address is:
Serious Topics1207 N La Brea Ave Ste 300Inglewood, CA 90302-1214
A new exhibition in Union Station, Far Out: Movement through Form and Color, features abstract artworks by six artists interpreting themes of energy, transition and movement. The work will be on view through January 2019 in the passageway that accesses the rail platforms between Union Station East and West.
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