Ultra Black

November 15, 2014 - January, 3, 2015

Rudolph Blume Fine Art/ArtScan Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a two-person exhibition titled, “Ultra Black” by Mario M. Muller and Randy Twaddle. The artists have known each other for a relatively brief time, but their artistic output over the past 30-plus years has carried on a continuous dialogue.

Muller is an artist, writer and curator who lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and his paintings are held in major collections and museums. Among his many endeavors, he edits a witty art blog called “TruffleHunting.”

Twaddle has lived and worked in Houston for 25 years. He is well known for his iconic drawings of transformers and power lines that are ubiquitous in the urban landscape. Twaddle’s work is widely exhibited, and is included in many private, museum and corporate collections.

Few artists have subjected themselves to the discipline and formal economy of using just black and white as their elemental colors of expression. Muller using India ink and Twaddle using Charcoal, Gouache and Watercolor have done just that. They relentlessly explore the reductive complexities of monochromatic icons.

Muller’s subject is light and the absence of light. The things we know are reduced to silhouetted form and blinding light. Urban architecture and a mobile citizenry populate some of his oeuvre and become visual ciphers for life in “Metropolis.” Muller flirts with abstraction while never leaving the viewer stranded in regard to his view of reality and seeing the familiar in a new way.

In Twaddle’s series “Reversal Drawings,” he employs well known phrases that are altered as to no longer be instantly recognizable. Their meaning is hidden in the shadows of a complex chiaroscuro, ready to be newly examined for their poetic or even ironic potential.