Everything has its place in Mühsam’s works; everything is deliberately arranged. Nevertheless, the boundary between reality and illusion cannot be clearly defined. This boundary seems to be in constant flux and to vary. There are ever-new folds and unfoldings. A reference to René Magritte or Giorgio de Chirico comes to mind. What is an image? What is being? What is real? What is perception? Giorgio Morandi once said: “Incidentally, I believe that there is nothing more surreal, nothing more abstract, than reality.”
Armin Mühsam’s works highlight the necessity of constantly striving for a language of presentation that helps bring the ambivalence of the artwork into the open. The necessity of a discourse that offers the possibility of letting artworks ask more questions than they answer, of giving them attention, respect, and care without confining them to a preconceived interpretive framework. The birth of a question from the work itself.
MIRJAM C. WENDT
| 1994 | BFA-Illustration. University of Applied Sciences, München, Germany |
| 1997 | MFA-Painting. Montana State University, Bozeman, MT |
| 2013 | Professor of Painting. Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, MO |