Armin Mühsam
"Dialectical Transformations"
Nov. 1 - Dec.17, 2021
Exhibition Statement:
An important aspect of my creative process is that I need something pre-existing to get it going, a found object in the widest sense of the word. Everything I do in the studio has its origin in something observed, something given which I then subject to various degrees of transformation.
Previously, my paintings showed how technology (as a stand-in for all of Western society) writes or draws into the land just like an artist would draw on a sheet of paper – through and with technology architectural forms are manipulated to compose a kind of environment that suits man’s economic needs. My work depicted structures built on and into the ground, leaving the imprint of something hard in the malleable earth. These structures were emblematic of our relation to the non-human environment: physical manifestations of the worldview that produces them.
About five years ago, I started collaging and developed a more abstract approach. The landscape, less defined but still a “deep” space, remains as the stage or backdrop where a human activity has been performed, but how I use architecture’s geometries has changed: Whereas I would previously place recognizably functional buildings into an organic setting, I now combine representational depictions of built environments with shapes whose origins may be architectural but are, for all intents and purposes, non-objective. I have become preoccupied with pattern and texture; everything I see has the potential to become a visual stimulus – a geometric abstraction, a color field, a tangible or ephemeral shape, a decorative surface, a referent of an architectural period.
About the artist:
Armin Mühsam received his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Montana State University and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from the University of Applied Sciences, München, Germany. He currently serves as a professor of art at Northwest Missouri State University.