“In Mulleady’s paintings, figures linger, move and leave through a dreamlike reality. They seem to be driven by a desire with fatal consequences.”
—Maurin DietrichJill Mulleady’s lush and enigmatic Schindler House, 2017, perfectly encapsulates the artist’s ability to conjure liminal and otherworldly spaces. Catapulted to widespread acclaim after her inclusion in the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, Mulleady has become known for her surreal representational paintings that powerfully merge disparate eras. Collapsing the real and the invented, Mulleady has developed a distinct pictorial language of distracted, self-absorbed figures who populate atmospheric parallel worlds, which is represented in the present work.
In Schindler House, Mulleady takes as her subject matter R. M. Schindler’s eponymous 1922 Los Angeles house, a landmark of early modern architectural history. Mulleady’s otherworldly compositions are typically populated by bodies rendered in dramatic, unnatural tones, and here a lone, green-hued female figure lounges in the iconic home’s interior.
Executed in 2017, Schindler House was exhibited in the group exhibition Wasser, which was exhibited across the MAK Center’s historic Schindler properties: the Kings Road House (colloquially known as the Schindler House), the 1936 Fitzpatrick-Leland House set in the Hollywood Hills, and a container ship in the Atlantic ocean. The present work depicts a room in the Kings Road House and was exhibited in its sister site. Like the exhibition’s theme, which explored notions of delocalization and multiplicity, Mulleady’s composition slips in and out of narrative focus. The artist often stages her paintings in architectural spaces that become activated by her artistic intervention. The multi-site venue of the Wasser exhibition proved a fertile subject to explore, resulting in the compelling Schindler House.
The present work in Wasser, The MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Fitzpatrick-Leland House and Schindler House, Los Angeles, March 9–June 4, 2017. At a Glance
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Mulleady was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before earning a MFA from the Chelsea College of Arts in London.
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Following her inclusion in the group exhibition Wasser, Mulleady notably presented a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern in 2017 and a public art installation with the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2020.
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Her work was included in the Hammer Museum’s acclaimed biennial Made in L.A. in 2021.
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Schindler House is the second work by Mulleady to come to auction, following her auction debut in 2021 with Great Pains to Simplify my Environment, which fetched HKD 1,386,000 ($178,543).
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Mulleady’s work is represented in public collections including the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Le Consortium, Dijon.
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Provenance
Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles
Private Collection, Europe
Acquired from the above by the present ownerExhibited
Los Angeles, The MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Fitzpatrick-Leland House and Schindler House, Wasser, March 9–June 4, 2017
307
Schindler House
signed, signed with the artist's initials and dated "JILL MULLEADY JM 2017" on the reverse
oil on canvas
39 3/4 x 45 in. (101 x 114.3 cm)
Painted in 2017.
Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $82,550
Patrizia Koenig
Specialist, Head of Sale, Afternoon Session
+1 212 940 1279
pkoenig@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Afternoon Session
New York Auction 16 May 2023
309
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