Un-Titled 03,05,13,20

New York City based German artist Eva Mueller’s suite of four photogravures are four stills from her ‘Un-Titled’ video project from 2016, a looping 10.5 minute video sculpture programmed by the artist’s longtime collaborator Bojan Furlani. A sequence of twenty faces, painted pure black, continuously morphs from one into the other at a nearly imperceptible pace. Shot close up, showing neither hair nor any other identifiable reference to gender, ethnicity or cultural heritage, the eyes serve as the only portal for the viewer to gain access to the essence of each individual, moving beyond gender and race inviting us to contemplate the importance/unimportance of either. Black is the unifying color here, absorbing all light and distraction until only pure form remains. Through the invested engagement of time, one may begin to question whether or not they have been staring at the same face throughout, despite the fact that the image is always in flux. In that moment, there is a stillness that serves as a collective recognition of what connects us all on a deeper level.

Master printer and publisher James Stroud saw the video presented at the Satellite Art Show during Art Basel Miami in 2018 and invited Mueller to make a print project from it choosing four distinctly different stills from the video. The plates were crafted by Lothar Osterburg in New York City and printed by James Stroud in editions of 30 at Center Street Studio, Milton, MA. The numbers in the print titles indicate each image’s position in the original video sequence. They were printed on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper in editions of 30. They measure 30 x 22 inches (each sheet), 20 x 14.5 inches (each image). They are only available as a set of four.