Dave Muller

LOL, 2021

Acrylic and aluminum paint on gessoed plywood panel

9 1/2" diameter x 1 1/4"(24.1cm diameter x 3.2cm)

Retail: $4,500

This work is not suitable for framing.

Description: Muller appropriates album art in a painterly style that is both whimsical and factual. The paintings are autobiographical and expressive; adoring as well as historically referential. He is careful to include details like hype stickers, anachronistic price tags, and extinct record shop labels, always attending to age, use, wear, and tear. Smaller paintings fit inside the central holes of larger ones, offering the contextual effect of a re-mix or playlist. These paintings tell idiosyncratic stories of politics, subculture, and atmosphere that have morphed through eras and cultures.

In addition to being the shape of a record, the circle has been a fertile form that Muller continues to revisit. Early paintings and sculptures depicted disco balls, flower balls, and clover balls. Watercolors of newspaper cutouts were arranged in star-like rings. Though the paintings are not 3-D, they are sculptural--Muller suggests, "perhaps 2 ½-D." "Spheres often appear in nature. Bubbles are held together by surface tension. Plants might group in spherical clusters to maximize the amount of light striking a given volume. You curl up into a ball to stay warm."

Artist bio: Dave Muller was born in 1964 in San Francisco and lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including solo shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Castilla y León, León, Spain; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and St. Louis Art Museum, MI. His work is represented in the public collections of such notable institutions as the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

Artwork Pickup Information:

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10.25% Pasadena, CA, sales tax applies to all auction purchases.

Courtesy of artist and Blum & Poe Gallery