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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Matt Mullican, 7 1/2 Bulletin Boards
7 1/2 Bulletin Boards, by Matt Mullican, 2013

Matt Mullican, Artist
7 1/2 Bulletin Boards , 2013

Medium
Selection of drawings, unframed
Dimensions
Dimensions variable
Credit Line
Courtesy of the artist and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich. Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; photography by Brian Forrest

Over the course of his career, Matt Mullican has developed an extensive language of signs and symbols that describe systems of knowledge. Breaking down experience into component parts, he catalogs the world around him, creating an interior landscape that has congruencies with the societal sense of reality but that also diverges into the previously uncharted territory of his subconscious mind. This work, composed specifically for Take It or Leave It, is a continuation of a formal mechanism that Mullican has been deploying for more than a decade to bring structure to his prolific output of images and notes. Culled from more than thirty years of work, the site-specific installation of drawings expressed an underlying cosmology of his practice, emphasizing accumulation and repetition but also materializing the rigor of this personal archive.