Rob Mull
Found Object Art
I am intrigued by the more uncommon and peculiar visual aspects of the pieces of the world I encounter. Likewise, in art, it is the realm of abstract art that moves me.
When considerably vague suggestions of familiar things begin to emerge from abstract work, I believe the viewer’s experience can be heightened. We know what we are seeing but the mind is busy interacting with memory, and luckily sometimes the search is unresolved.
My desire to make art is accompanied by the desire to make constructed things. These two motivations, along with my obsession with the visual appeal of my surroundings, led me to assemblage, utilizing fragments of day-to-day familiarity to form a cohesive yet uncommon whole.
Looking for components, I choose according to impulse rather than preconception, allowing chance to set the stage for the development of the work. Most of the components I collect tend to be worn, damaged, crushed or shredded.
In the studio I experiment heavily with temporary combinations, in order to find mergers that excite and have some measure of conventional compositional rhythm. During the process, I try to keep tendencies to develop highly representational imagery down to a minimum and always move toward montage. When in progress, my own take on these works remains vague until a personal interpretation arises, which then guides me to completion and titling.