Monograph based on an ambitious project that revisits forty years of Californian post-conceptual artist's work, between symbolism of representation and exploration of the subconscious under hypnosis, with two essays and an interview.
With emphasis on archives and experimental work, the
exhibition 12 by 2 showed for the first time forty years of the
work of Matt Mullican and his doppelganger, That Person,
who appeared under hypnosis. Two essays examine this complex
body of work, trace the history of hypnosis in art and
show links with anthropology. Finally, an interview of the
artist highlights his activity as a collector, among other things.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Institut d'art contemporain (IAC), Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes, from June to September 2010.
Working in the fields of performance, installation, digital technology and sculpture, Matt Mullican (born 1951 in Santa Monica, lives an works in New York) is seeking to develop a cosmological model based on a personal vocabulary combining the formal and the symbolic. Hypnosis and cartography are his principal modes of operation. He explores functional sign systems of his own devising through activities under hypnosis, in a permanent oscillation between the real and its schematization, between fiction and its physical reality.
