黑料不打烊

In 1986, Marlon Mullen began practicing at NIAD Art Center, a progressive art studio for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Since 2012, his paintings have primarily employed covers and advertisements from glossy art magazines such as Artforum, Art News, or Art in America as source material. Mullen paints with his canvas flat on the table, and the publication he has carefully selected sits neatly atop the work in progress as he transmutes the content. He starts with text before moving onto painting the background and then finally, the imagery, stripped of fine details. While Mullen鈥檚 compositions have become increasingly intricate in the past decade, earlier paintings like those featured in this exhibition illustrate a preoccupation with text as motif. Mullen鈥檚 style is singular, but on any given day at NIAD, one is likely to encounter a number of artists in the studio who are studying art historical tomes or images of pop culture icons that serve as prompt, inspiration, and accompaniment.