Jill Mulleady, The Remedy (2022), via Gladstone
Continuing a body of work that mines peculiar tensions and surreal moments, artist Jill Mulleady presents a series of new works at Gladstone Gallery in New York this month. The artist, whose work fuses together memory and the imaginary in a range of permutations and versions, here exhibits an impressive selection of pieces that span her own aesthetic capacities as much as they do subject matter.
Jill Mulleady, Vermillion (2022), via Gladstone
Mulleady’s work functions at a strange intersection of the ephemeral and the subtly sinister, arranging bodies and scenes in a way where a single daub of paint, or what seems to be a casual detail, opens the pieces up the new interpretations and buried narratives. In one work, The Vampire, Mulleady depicts her main subject wrapped around a tree, her lip touched with a slight fleck of blood red. Nearby, a body lies in the snow, while a picturesque winter scene seems to unfold around the character. The work is undeniably macabre, and seems to become even more so when considering the strangely peaceful backdrop. Another work, Mars, performs a similar operation, with a flowing night sky reminiscent of Van Gogh’s luminescent scenes; yet here, Mulleady accompanies the image with a gory, gruesome series of animal carcasses, and a hunter to the bottom of the image, aiming carefully.
Jill Mulleady, A Sun for the Sleepers (2022), via Gladstone
Jill Mulleady, Mars (2022), via Gladstone
These are works with a hefty emotional package, and one that unfolds before the viewer, rather than presents its case. Mulleady makes the most of these moments, filling her canvases with broad swathes of landscape and meticulous depictions of human faces and responses, then turns the knife with a well-timed and jarring inclusion. Others, particularly the smaller works on view, seem to dance around this concept by contrast, instead depicting a range of bodies in strange and unspoken physical arrangements. Bodies lock and intertwine, or, in works like The Remedy, seem to subject each other to unspoken medical treatment.
Jill Mulleady, The Vampire (2022), via Gladstone
Perhaps its that unsettling energy that lurks at the base of Mulleady’s works here: not a disjunction of image and spacing, but rather what the inclusion of alarming images will do to the broader network of images. Here, twisting her figures and scenes with single points of modulation, Mulleady makes a case for a sense of dread by addition.
The show closes October 22nd.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Jill Mulleady, Bend Towards the Sun [Exhibition Site]
