Matt Mullican (Santa Monica, California, 1951) studied at the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia, Los Angeles. With a complex body of work produced in a multiplicity of formats, he investigates systems of knowledge, symbols, signs and language, driven by his fascination with the relationship between perception and representation. Featuring performative experiments with hypnosis, drawings and large installations with coloured canvases and emblematic icons, Mullican’s contribution to contemporary art has been fundamental since the late 1980s. Using a plurality of media, from drawings to paintings, banners, tapestries, coloured glass panels, light boxes, bouncy castles, digitally generated films, maps, diagrams, architectural models, objects, newspaper cuttings, writings and poetry, he has developed a conceptual body of work centred on language and its possibilities of signification. Through a cosmology made up of multiple elements, Mullican focuses on the subject’s strategies for decoding the everyday environment and constructing new ways of signifying and organising the world.

Since the 1980s, his work has been shown regularly in major institutions in Europe and the United States. Important retrospective exhibitions were held at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2000); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2011); Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2018); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2019) and Kunsthalle St. Annen, Lübeck, Germany (2022). His work is included in the collections of the Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; MoMA and Whitney Museum, New York; and MACBA, Barcelona, among many others.