Dave Muller is known for running a nomadic Los
Angeles art project called Three Day Weekend, which functions simultaneously as a social
situation and artwork showcase. This traveling party/exhibition has taken place in various
countries. With Spatial (2000), he presents a multi-paneled watercolor panorama view of
the night sky, including some earthly things that intrude into the view. The work lightly
suggests drip painting, the sublime, and the connection in artistic practice between inner
and outer space. Muller (b. 1964, California) lives and works in Los Angeles.
Dave Muller's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Murray Guy, New York (2000),
and Blum & Poe, Santa Monica, CA (1999). Group shows include "Made in California:
Now," LACMA, Los Angeles (2000); "democracy!," Royal College of Art, London
(2000); and "After the Gold Rush," Thread Waxing Space, NY (1999), among others.
He has also curated exhibitions at the Frankfurt Art Fair (2000) and the Soho Arts
Festival, NY (1998).
“This project attempts to portray various belief systems, as they pertain to
describing space, in a non-hierarchical, all-over manner. Concepts of space have existed
since the beginning of thought. Some, over time, have been superceded. Others coexist in a
seemingly contradictory manner. For example, the twinkling star twinkles because of
differing densities in our atmosphere, not because it is itself changing. A bright moving
star might be a communications satellite, or the new space station. Or it might be a small
white dot in one of these drawings.
Explaining the heavens has always been a hotbed for the imagination. The universe is
either expanding infinitely, or expanding and contracting, or who knows what. Harvesting
asteroids for precious metals has almost moved out of the realm of science fiction.
Planets have been detected in other stellar systems. Scientific concepts of time and space
are still in flux.
Outer space is interesting precisely because it is unattainable to us normal folk. We can
only look at it from afar, and extrapolate intricate theories. It's a bit like
constructing the past from fossils. We make movies about dinosaurs. But do we really know
what color they were? Does it matter? After all, isn't it really about us?”
--Dave Muller, 2000 |