Author: Mario M. Muller

http://trufflehunting.wordpress.com/

With 27 years as an Artist, Educator and Curator under my belt, I know what I like and why I like it.
I hold a degree in Filmmaking and Fine Art from Northwestern University where my primary mentor was Ed Paschke. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have master classes with Roy Lichtenstein, Wayne Thiebaud, Esteban Vincente, and Elaine de Kooning.
A born and bred New Yorker, I live and work in Los Angeles with my wife and four year old son.
As a writer of cultural criticism, my primary subjects have been Painting, Photography and Film. My film reviews appeared regularly in several Mid-western publications in the 1990’s while my art criticism has been exclusively published in New York and Los Angeles.
Dovetailing neatly with my critical interests, I have curated numerous exhibitions for corporate, gallery and non-for-profit venues. Essays have accompanied most of these shows.
And as an educator I have taught as a guest lecturer at the School for Visual Arts, International Center for Photography and the 92nd Street Y, all in NYC.

Posts

New Season in Culver City

Communal openings do bring out the crowds. On an evening when frost warnings were posted, LA’s art world denizens came out in serious numbers to attend dozens of galleries in the La Cienega/Washington vortex. It must be said from the onset, openings are probably the worst possible time to actually view art. This malady was [...]

Blue McRight, 2010, Oil on Paper, 6 x 9 inches

Jasper Johns at Matthew Marks

The thing about Jasper Johns that is often overlooked is that his art has become part of the DNA of the Art World. Some might argue that this happened in a Big Bang fashion in the late fifties when his art burst on the scene. It was then that the rather commonplace motifs of Johns’ [...]

Jasper Johns at Matthew Marks

Inaugural Group Exhibition at Regen Projects

The New Regen Projects exhibition space opened in late September in an area of Los Angeles that can best be approximated as south Hollywood. At over 10,000 square feet and designed by architect Michael Maltzan, the space meets and exceeds the expectations of ambitious and pretentious (I use this word as a positive) upper echelon [...]

Doug Aitken
MOVIE
2012
High density foam, wood, mirror and painted glass
27 1/4 x 79 1/2 x 8 inches (69.2 x 201.9 x 20.3 cm)
Edition of 4, 2 AP

Matthias Düwel at Martha Otero

The concept of an exhibition being perfect for a summertime setting might too easily be misinterpreted as a slight. It is not. The paintings and drawings by Matthias Düwel currently on display at Martha Otero Gallery capture the high key color and sartorial swing that does indeed seem suited for the ratatattat of August. If [...]

Matthias Düwel at Martha Otero

James Fee at Craig Krull

Photography’s greatest Achilles heel may be that it’s too damn illustrative. How then to wrestle the poetry back into a medium which explains so much and leaves so little for interpretation? I was reminded of this re-occuring  struggle when I saw, again, the emotive and evocational prints of James Fee at Craig Krull Gallery. Fee, [...]

James Fee, Fly By, 2003, Toned Silver Gelatin Print, 14 x 21 inches

MacCracken and Innerst at Michael Kohn

The thing about group shows, especially in the long dog days of summer, is that they can drive you to distraction. While the art world in general has become a 365 days a year affair, many galleries still work on a “cultural season” of September through May. Summer group shows might not be the best [...]

John MacCracken, OH-NANA, 1978 (surface detail)

Alighiero Boetti at the Fowler Museum at UCLA

Pick of the Week for July 25th, 2012 Granted, to write a rave review of a show closing in four days is regretable. But when the art work on display and the curatorial excellence is so remarkable, it would be more of a crime not to sing its praises. The exhibition in question is the [...]

Alighiero Boetti Tutto, 1988
Embroidery on fabric 100 x 70 cm Collezione Alessandra Bonomo Photograph courtesy Bonomo Gallery, Rome © Alighiero Boetti Estate by Artists Rights Society (ARS) and Società Italiana di Autori ed Editori (SIAE) 2011

Carl Andre Redux at Gagosian and Ace Galleries

Carl Andre’s star is ascendant. Again. This is ironic because the artist has long ago earned his place in the canon of art history. But he hasn’t been much of a presence on the gallery scene.  Slowly but surely we are seeing Andre pieces reemerge in the exhibition landscape, no doubt catalyzed by the fact [...]

Carl Andre Redux at Gagosian and Ace Galleries

Frank Stella At Leslie Sacks Contemporary

Pick of the week for June 25th, 2012 Frank Stella has created distinct bodies of work every decade for the past 50 years. His working methodology has defined the template of the contemporary artist-variations on a theme. Whether by his artistic nature or by design, this approach has all but become de rigueur in MFA [...]

Frank Stella At Leslie Sacks Contemporary

Architecture in Art – 3 Galleries in Culver City

Dialogues between Fine Art and Architecture abound this month in Culver City. No less than three galleries opened June 2nd featuring Architecture driven work. The media harnessed are diverse, and the results are equally varied. Amy Park At Paul Kopeiken Gallery Amy Park’s Watercolor renditions/homages to the late great Julius Schulman are intoxicating. Anyone familiar [...]

Amy Park, Charles and Ray Eames House #3, 1950, Pacific Palisades, CA 2012. Watercolor on Paper,30" x 22"