The Artwork of Matt Mullican
Matt Mullican is an American artist, active since the beginning of the 1970s and a pioneer in the use of hypnosis as a performance practice in art.
Mullican’s artistic practice is accompanied by two main ways of working: first, with the constant aim of investigating and examining the relation between reality and perception; and second, providing structure for every aspect of the human condition. The definition of a genuine cosmology has been defined by Mullican as the “Five Worlds”. He shows in his work how the understanding of reality is an interior construction, forged entirely by the imagination,
Each world of the “Five Worlds” corresponds to a different level of perception and is represented by just as many colors. The color green is for the physical and material elements; blue for everyday life; yellow for the arts; black for language and signs, and red for subjective understanding.
Mullican’s art is also an exploration of the subconscious mind through the practice of hypnosis and of states of profound concentration and trances. In the state of the induced trance, Mullican claims that he becomes another person, quite unlike himself, known as “That Person”: an ageless and sexless entity yet with its own personality, and one capable of producing works of art.