Nigel Mullins

Art Works

An Aesthetic for Cruelty and Violence Owner: Admin Views: 283 Date: February 18, 2009

Hopefull Monster Owner: Admin Views: 265 Date: February 18, 2009

Specimens Owner: Admin Views: 272 Date: February 18, 2009

Nigel Mullins

Nigel Mullins began the millennium as a nominee for the Daimler Chrysler Award for contemporary South African Art 2000, and later in the year he won a merit prize at the ABSA Atelier 2000. This second one-man exhibition at the Hanel Gallery, which includes his award-winning series of oil paintings, AnAesthetic for Cruelty and Violence, will be followed by one-man shows at the Royal Over-seas League premises in London and Edinburgh, as well as exhibitions in Germany. He will also participate in the "Art Fair 2001" in Frankfurt. The artist is known for his oil paintings which, while skillfully crafted, are invested with a manic energy. His large single-figure Superhumans (1999) have, through a set of anarchic mutations, become single heads, collectively titled Hopeful Monsters. These have retained the complex juxtaposition of abstract and literal elements of his previous work. The viewer is encouraged to share the same journey the artist has undertaken with each encounter with the canvas, and from one image to the next. AnAesthetic for Cruelty and Violence is a formally composed set of 42 paintings, rigorously created and colouristically sumptuous. Each smaller piece within the whole is the setting for an act or acts of violence, either blatant or inferred. From the jewel-like brilliance of early Western altarpieces to contemporary starkness, there is a rhythm and a beauty which cleverly and clearly sets up the paradox of aesthetic and violence.