Jean Pierre Muller:
The Long March (a prelude)

13-28 January 2018
open: Sat-Sun 1-6pm
preview: 12 January 6-9pm
closing event:  28 January 4-7pm with performance by Sean O'Hagan (High Llamas, Microdisney) at 6pm

The Long March chronicles the journey of two children on the run. We don’t know what and why they are fleeing, but their voyage sees them cross paths with many other people on the move. They witness the ancestors’ long marches and interact with each of the seven gods of the week; they hear speeches pronounced and secrets whispered; they read the signs on the walls and even find time to play.

The Long March has been conceived under the aegis of Jean Pierre Muller’s ongoing 7x7 series in which seven leading musicians – Archie Shepp, Terry Riley, Robert Wyatt, Sean O’Hagan, Kassin, Nile Rodgers and Mulatu Astatke – have each collaborated individually with Muller on themes inspired by the mythical associations of the seven days of the week, the seven notes of the scale and the seven colours of the rainbow. The Long March emerged from conversations both personal and artistic between Muller and Archie Shepp, the celebrated jazz giant. Originally conceived for a stage show, the large prints on fabric, with their subtle transparencies and supple combinations, proved so rich a language that Muller began working with them as compelling installation materials in their own right. Wandering amongst them, the viewer embarks on a perilous voyage.

Jean Pierre Muller lives and works in Brussels. He makes vibrant assemblages using high and low forms and techniques. The elements that Muller uses in his works reflect processes of urban evolution and the way people become connected to each other through common experiences and references. Like streets grown organically over time, these elements interact through juxtaposition and ever increasing layers of complexity and history. They also tell many intertwined stories, much like the intertwined stories of people in a street, who may not know each other but are linked through commonality of space and time.

Muller is committed to both his art practice and his role as head of the Printmaking Department at La Cambre (Brussels), one of Belgium’s leading schools of art and design. His work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Saragossa, the Hanover World Fair, the Royal Festival Hall, Summerhall as part of the Edinburgh Festival, WhiteBox New York etc.

 

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