Koplin Del Rio

January 22, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Michelle Muldrow: Un-Exported L.A.
Exhibition Dates: February 27 – April 10, 2010
Artist Remarks followed by Reception: Saturday, February 27, 2009, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 10:00 am – 5:30 pm; Saturday: 11:00 am – 5:30 pm
Public Contact: 310-836-9055

Koplin Del Rio is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of work by noted landscape painter, Michelle Muldrow.

Having lived in and out of California throughout her life, Michelle Muldrow’s visual perspectives on landscape are filtered through her experiences driving through the American West. The ideas for her newest body of work, ‘Un-Exported L.A.’ began with an exploration of historical imagery of the American West and how it relates to the philosophies of the sublime and the exporting of the American Myth. Influenced by the 19th century embrace of the majestic frontier, artists such as Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran filled Muldrow’s subconscious at the inception of the project. Her initial intention was then fueled by the landmark 1975 exhibition at the George Eastman House, “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape”. The photographs of American landscapes with their open spaces of desolate capitalism became a frontier in their own right. Muldrow’s extensive research led her to the idea that the grand gestural vistas of California that once evoked the hand of God have transformed into the overwhelming and awe inspiring untenable nature of man.

Los Angeles is the machine that churns out the imagery of national identity, yet the actual entity of Los Angeles is foreign to America. These paintings represent the influx of immigrants, an explosion of cultures, a Los Angeles that exists beyond any mode of attempted homogeneity. Living in the shadow of myth, the un-exported Los Angeles represents that most global, international and sprawling vista of all American cities. The sublime Michelle Muldrow thought she would revisit is not the majestic hand of God, but the impact of man, majestic in his own right.

After many years spent in the Bay Area, Michelle Muldrow now resides in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She earned a BFA from the University of Minnesota. In 2004 she completed a summer residency program at Cooper Union in New York City. Muldrow was awarded the Creative Workforce Fellowship Grant in 2009.

For further information or photos, please contact Ronald De Angelis at (310) 836-9055.