Bridget Mullen

Mine is a process of sympathetic improvisations. I don’t pre-sketch; I repurpose abstract paintings as figurative paintings. By prioritizing formal concerns over narrative intentions and coupling irrational and referential forms, I create paintings that function as propositions or uncertain scenarios. I use repetition like propaganda to normalize strangeness, imply motion, show the shadow self, and create an army. Symmetry hypnotizes and mirrors the viewer peering in as the painting peers back, symbolic of the incommunicable abstraction of our interiority. Apparent in my work are themes of vulnerability as strength, quitting as self-care, the relationship of the individual to their community, and our unknowable interiority.

"Sunset As Self" 2021 Flashe on linen 20 x 16 inches premiered Art Basel 2021 OVR with Shulamit Nazarian Thumbnail-"Block" 2021 Flashe on linen 22 x 15 inches premiered Art Basel 2021 OVR with Shulamit Nazarian

Bridget Mullen (b. 1976, Winona, MN) holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and a BAE from Drake University. She has been awarded residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell, The Jan Van Eyck Academie, The Lighthouse Works, Roswell Artist-In-Residence Program, The Fine Arts Work Center, VCCA, and Yaddo. Her recent solo exhibitions include Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Helena Anrather, New York, NY; and Annet Gelink, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and recent group exhibitions include Anne Barrault, Paris, France; Bosse & Baum, London, UK; Nathalie Karg, New York, NY; Wild Palms, Düsseldorf, Germany; DC Moore, New York, NY; Fahrenheit Madrid, Madrid, Spain; and L21, Mallorca, Spain. She is the recipient of the 2021 New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship, the 2017–2018 recipient of a studio from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, and the 2018–2019 participant in the Shandaken Paint School. Mullen’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Juxtapoz, Maake Magazine, and ArtMaze. Her work is in the collections of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell, NM, and the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Long Beach, CA. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.