Nature Morte has unveiled a solo exhibition of paintings by the American artist Stephen Mueller entitled Atmospheric Paintings at their Vasant Vihar gallery space. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, Stephen Mueller (1947-2011) was an artist, writer and educator who lived and worked in New York. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas (Austin, Texas, 1969) and his Master of Fine Arts from Bennington College (Bennington, Vermont, 1971).
Atmospheric Paintings is the third exhibition presented by Nature Morte including works by Stephen Mueller. On view are nine paintings employing polychromatic patterns and geometry, with elements suspended in space. The works evoke Mueller’s interest in spiritual and mythological ideologies and painting from the Indian subcontinent, specifically that of tantric Buddhism and Pahari miniatures. Symmetry is colligated with ambiguity, hard-edged structures are superimposed on fluidity. For Mueller, the works express ‘the folly of duality, the falsity of the idea of self’, echoing the notion of transience integral to Buddhist philosophy.
Stephen Mueller began showing his paintings in New York in the 1970s and had many shows at the Annina Nosei Gallery (one of the top galleries in Soho at the time, Nosei is famous for being the first to show the works of Barbara Kruger and Jean Michel Basquiat in the early 1980s). At the time, Mueller’s works were gestural abstractions that self-consciously struggled with how to keep painting relevant in an era of Conceptual Art and Photographic Deconstruction. Eschewing any sense of figuration, his paintings were never considered part of the Neo-Expressionist trend that dominated painting in the first half of the 1980s. As the 80s progressed, Mueller’s interests expanded and he studied and was influenced by the abstract languages he discovered in Pahari miniatures, Tibetan thangkas, and Indian Tantric abstraction. This led to works which accommodated multiple modes of abstraction into a single canvas, charged with intense colors, and a style which defined Mueller as an iconoclast in the New York art scene of the 1990s and early 2000s. This style he continued to explore until his death in 2011 and the paintings in this exhibition are indicative of Mueller’s mature work and expansive approach to his sources and influences. Other artists of the same generation with whom Mueller is often associated with are Brice Marden, Pat Steir, Ross Bleckner, and Mary Heilmann: painters who have infused painting with the principals of Process Art (in the sense that the techniques of the painting determine its imagery in some ways) and expanded its boundaries outside of the Western Canon.
Stephen Mueller was one of eight artists included in the first Nature Morte exhibition in India. The exhibition, entitled Nirguna/Saguna, opened at the then-new India Habitat Centre in New Delhi on November 15, 1997. The other artists included were Anita Dube, Vivan Sundaram, Rekha Rodwittiya, and Nataraj Sharma (all Indians), with the Americans Mueller, Joseph Kosuth and Gretchen Bender, and the Italian artist Stefano Arienti. The premise of the exhibition was works that referenced the human body without explicitly showing it, in painting, sculpture, video and installation. Nature Morte held a solo show of works by Mueller in its Berlin gallery (2008-2014): Stephen Mueller: Paintings 1991-2008; February 21 to March 21, 2009. It is due to his deep connection with both the art and philosophies of the Indian subcontinent that Nature Morte feels it appropriate to bring his works to the audience in New Delhi again.
What: Stephen Mueller: Atmospheric Paintings
When: December 13 — February 12, 2021
Where: Nature Morte, Vasant Vihar
