Guilty Pleasures
Guilty Pleasures locates our need to find solace and pursue happiness. Guilty not as a form of personal judgement but in terms of the narcissistic human need to seek personal comfort. Winter presents an unwelcoming world outside, pushing us towards a bleak confinement. We go inward in our lives, psyches and homes in order to console ourselves. This project was photographed in Syracuse NY during a nearly record-breaking winter of snow fall. Being inside can build a manic state with the snow accumulating outside. A hermetic wold of friends serves as a self portrait and a document of winter.
The launch of Guilty Pleasures the book opened with a solo show in September 2015 at Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia PA. In October I presented my project at the SPEConference in Pittsburgh, PA. A performance and slideshow was presented at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester NY in November of 2015 in addition to a Party/ Performance at Spark Contemporary Art Space in Syracuse NY. Artist talks at Bennington College, VT Tyler School of Art, PA and La Salle University, PA. The second expanded second solo exhibition at Duplex Gallery in Portland, OR, coinciding with Tarot readings from Guilty Pleasures Deck.
Install Vox Populi Gallery 2015
https://voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/jay-muhlin-guilty-pleasures/
Press:
https://www.aint-bad.com/article/2015/07/20/jay-muhlin/
http://www.title-magazine.com/2015/09/interview-jay-muhlin/ https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Jay-Muhlin/347815CF152F6057
Our Bones & Their True Names
The 2012 presidential election was the prompt- I was guided by a strange magnetism; towards evidence of what were once sacred. My walks felt primitive, like an animal recognizing it’s path back home. Philadelphia’s urban artifacts spoke metaphorically about current, divisive political issues and address them in a billboard-style: flattened and with an aggressive tone. I began recognizing my own thoughts in the outside world, emotions represented by objects in the city’s geography. What came out was more of a mood; in search of loneliness.
In the world I see: the traditional nuclear family is extinct, nature is unavoidable, and generations of solitude and warmth have been buried in the same, overlooked hole.
from 99 Days at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in Philadelphia, PA
Kid
As book spreads-
Kid is a multi-media installation exploring how images are mediated through intimate relationships. Featuring kinetic elements, tactile photographs, and scent, the exhibit considers how photography offers the very building blocks of our current physical and social world. Set in the wilds of NJ suburbia, the artist shares images that document his
relationship with a young girl who he is helping raise to underscore the fragility and sweetness within everyday rituals. Kid is Muhlin's final member show with Vox Populi which builds upon and concludes his previous series of exhibitions/book output, including Guilty Pleasures and Sleeve On My Heart.
Kid is something i can offer her, like a cat offering a mouse. Sometimes sad songs have happy lyrics, but sometimes happy songs have sad lyrics. The images are made to be felt as much as they are seen.
Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia PA 2018
Press:
https://hyperallergic.com/421271/jay-muhlin-vox-populi-scent-of-flowers/
Passerby
Our collective mythology of the American road trip creates an unrealistic image of America. Passerby consists of images made while traveling at 55mph or faster in an eighteen-wheel truck. Over the course of driving hundreds of miles through the American West, I amassed a collection of over twenty thousand photographs. I am editing these images into different formal presentations; a cinematic three channel video installation slide show, a single channel version with narrower visual themes, a photographic book of about 100 images, and a smaller book of images paired with drawings.
The photographs from Passerby conjoin the voyeuristic act of seeing with the camera’s ability to render an image at high speeds. Making the images involved a process of active looking and confronting the dislocation from the place that is part of the traveler’s experience. Compounded by moving at high speeds, the photographs are removed from the initial experience and context of seeing through human vision. Passerby is a meditation on seeing the American West.
Sleeve On My Heart
with Last Year For TomorrowVox Populi Gallery 2014
https://voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/sleeve-on-my-heart/
Press:
https://knightfoundation.org/articles/vox-populi-muhlin-dumlao-prince-duzer/
Sleeve On My Heart: I endured an uncelebrated winter: half buried in wall-to-wall, kneeling under ceilings within reach. These images are moments from my orbit through the slowest days and coldest nights, surrounding myself with what matters most. This work was exhibited in a solo show at Vox Populi Gallery in Feburary 2014, seclected prints were exhibited at the Woodmere Art Mueseum, Sunshine Art Gallery, and won the Esther & Harvey Graiter Memorial Prize. This series of prints was also made into a phototbook.