Marlie Mul’s artistic practice manifests somewhere in between sculpture, painting, print, fashion, distribution, writing, experiments in branding, the social, the flimsy, and the virtual.
References to the flowing, the liquid, the oozing, recur in Marlie Mul’s work on a formal level and metaphoric themes – from her folded paintings, to flaccid silicone works planted with thinning (synthetic) hairs, to facsimile sculptures of rain puddles and enquiries into the history of tobacco smoke. Her work is intricately fabricated while keeping a strong DIY character.
In May 2017 Marlie Mul publicly cancelled a solo exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Glasgow, due to impassable working circumstances, which lead to an advertisement of said cancellation inside the galleries of the museum itself. In the aftermath of that situation, she co-initiated the counter-institutional fanzine ground together with writer and poet Harry Burk, and published the book CANCELLED in 2018. With the project PMS she takes on a form of 'branding-drag' that employs the accessible format of the t-shirt as a tool for image circulation and the visualising of community, the brand itself taking as theme the human body's hormonal ups and downs. She runs Hermany, a nomadic project space that sets out to blur the specificity of exhibition audiences by continuously changing its content, medium, and location. Hermany has hosted the work of various artists and performers, and was also the project name under which she initiated the collective projects "Fashion Café" (2019) and "Fashion Time" (2022) wherein the spectacle of fashion was taken as a starting point for the making and presentation of art works. Since 2021 she works on various series of sculptures intricately made from silicone and (synthetic) hair.Excerpt from an article in Spike Magazine (issue July 2021) by Max Henry on Marlie Mul's solo exhibition "Sperms Going to a Fashion Show" at Croy Nielsen Vienna in May 2021:
"As contemporary art diffuses into armchair sociology, there are nonetheless some constants to hang your hat on. It’s the good fortune of time immemorial that provocative artists take familiar things and pivot them with transgressive acts to shock the senses. Take the cryptic art of Marlie Mul. Diffident she is not. She crafts innocuous-looking objects in various stages of construction that melt and terraform like 3D prints stuck in an outmoded software program. Something in her sculptures has gone absurdly wrong, like a morphed GIF, scrambled by the corruption of its data. This is what makes them tick. Their lightness of touch belies the weightiness of their industrial materials. The functional bumps into the dysfunctional. They wed. They are real. One can laugh at the pattern-recognition gone wrong, yet still be grounded in the rudiments of her brazen sculptural derring-do."
Educational work
Next to her art practise Marlie Mul works in education. She is currently chair of the Course Committee of Visual Arts and a coordinator of the Master in Visual Arts at KASK (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten) in Ghent. Between 2018 and 2023 Marlie Mul was head of the MFA programme Work.Master in the Visual Arts Department at HEAD Genève (Geneva University of Art and Design). She has previously taught courses at the Architectural Association in London, and was a guest teacher at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, Central St Martins School of Art in London, La Cambre ENSAV in Brussels and UDK in Berlin.
SOLO SHOWS2022 Have You Tried Turning It Off and On, Wiels Project Room, Brussels, BE
2021 Sperms Going to a Fashion Show, Croy Nielsen, Vienna, AT
2018 Stuff, Mother Culture, Los Angeles, US
2017 Booby, Croy Nielsen Gallery, Vienna, AT
2017 Cancelled exhibition, at GoMA/Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK
2015 Arbeidsvitaminen, Vilma Gold, London, UK
2014 No Oduur, Tongewölbe T25, Ingolstadt, DE
2013 Boneless Banquet For One, Croy Nielsen, Berlin, DE
2013 Great Offers, (two person exhibition with Morag Keil), CEO Gallery, Malmo, SE
2012 So We Came Anyway, In Barrels, Fluxia, Milan, IT
2012 No Oduur (Your Smoke Draws Me In), Oslo10, Basel, CH
2012 Stop Being So Attractive I Can’t Get Anything Done, Autocenter, Berlin, DE
2012 No Oduur, Space, London, UK
selected GROUP SHOWS
✿ 2023 ✿
Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, AT
The Stuff of Life/The Life of Stuff, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, UK
Homotopy Type Theory, Centralbanken, Oslo, NO
All Babies, Cabin 3, Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, BE✿ 2022 ✿
Only One Step from Heaven, Tonus/La Sira, Paris, FR
Rob Tufnell Gallery, Venice, IT
Let Your () do the Talking, NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, DE (as PMS)
Gone Fishing, Flat Time House, London, UK
Complete Trust, Zaza', Milan, IT
FASHION TIME, Mala, Lisbon, PT
The Pots of Etablissement, Etablissement d'en face, Brussels, BE
Phantasmic Riff, Untere Augartenstraße 26, Vienna, AT
✿ 2021 ✿
The Party, Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Schwaz, AT
Bye-Bye His-tory, Centre de la Gravure et de l'image imprimée, La Louvière, BE
Back Matter, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Rome✿ 2020 ✿
✿ 2019 ✿
Crack Up – Crack Down, curated by Slavs & Tatars, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, PL
Dans la Cave – Hermany, Brussels, BE
The Shop – Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna, AT
(Un)endliche Ressourcen? Die Kehrseite des Konsums – Künstlerische Positionen seit 1980, Städtischen Galerie Karlsruhe, DE
Curated by Vienna 2019: Circulation, Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna, AT
Stoneroses #8, Brücke Museum, Berlin, DE
Hermany presents: "Fashion Café", Kantine, Brussels, BE
Crack Up – Crack Down - The 33rd Biennial of Graphic Arts, curated by Slavs & Tatars, The International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), Ljubljana, SI
Four Perspectives for the Blue Whale, organised by Ian Wooldridge, Istituto Svizzero, Rome, IT
Le petit cercle Bruxellois, Avenue de Jette / Institut de carton, Brussels, BE
ground / The CEC at artgenève, art fair booth curated by ground (Marlie Mul and Harry Burke) for Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva, CH
✿ 2018 ✿
Fabriques de contre-savoirs, 49 Nord 6 Est–FRAC Lorraine, Metz, FR
Terres de femmes, Praz-Dellavallade, Paris, FR
She Sees The Shadows, MOSTYN (DRAF + MOSTYN), Llandudno, WAL
Trois collectioneurs, Autrement #5, ETE 78, Brussels, BE
Crash Test, La Panacée art center, Montpellier, FR
✿ 2017 ✿
Olga Balema, Marlie Mul, Iza Tarasewicz, Croy Nielsen, Vienna, AT
The New Normal, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, LBN
Eric Schmid is an Idiot, What Pipeline, Detroit, US
✿ 2016 ✿
Wirikuta, Mexican Time-slip, Museo Espacio/MECA, Aguascalientes, MX
Daydream from 2013, CANADA, New York, US
Dress Rehearsal, Centre for Style, 9th Berlin Biennal, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, DE
With Institutions Like These…, The Averard Hotel, London, UK
Der Sprache der Dinge, 21er Haus, Vienna, AT
One, No One and One Hundred Thousand, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, AT
Formen des Auswurfs, Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Schwaz, AT
✿ 2015 ✿
Anagramma, Cura, Rome, IT
Pavillion de l’esprit Nouveau 2.0, Swiss Institute, New York, US
Äppärat, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX
Raw and Delirious, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern
Terrapolis, Neon Foundation / Académie Française, Athens, GR
Art in the age of…Energy and Raw Material, Witte de With, Rotterdam, NL
✿ 2014 ✿
Je suis feministe, Unit 21/Penarth Centre, London, UK
To The End of the Line, Château Shatto, Los Angeles, US
Cold Intimacy, Anna Schwarz Gallery, Sydney, AU
Puddle, Pothole, Portal, Sculpture Center, New York, US
Silly Canvas / Center for Style, Utopian Slumps, Sydney, AU
Couplings, Taylor Macklin, Zurich, CH
In Real Life, Christine König Gallery, Vienna, AT
Airbnb Pavilion, Venice, IT
The Great Acceleration, Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Mueseum, Taiwan
Journal, ICA, London, UK
Everything Falls Faster Than an Anvil, PACE, London, UK
Nature After Nature, Fridericianum, Kassel, DE
The Promise of Melancholy and Ecology, Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, IT
Bloomington: mall of America, north side food court, across from Burger King & The Bank Of Payphones that don’t take incoming calls, Bortolami, New York, US
Thin Air, Slopes Projects, Melbourne, AU
Basic Zone, (link to virtual tour here) Casamadre, Napoli, IT
Geographies of Contamination, DRAF, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK
✿ 2013 ✿
Curated By, Vienna 2013: Why Painting Now?, Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna, AT
Under The BQE, M/L Artspace, organised by Marie Karlberg and Lena Henke, New York, US
Day Before This Place, Tanya Leighton, Berlin, DE
Forming The Loss in Darkness, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, FR
One After One,Vilma Gold, London, UK
✿ 2012 ✿
Humble Habits Domestic Monuments, Hinter Haus Des Meeres, Vienna, AT
Net Narrative, Carlos/Ishikawa, London, GB
8003, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, FR
A Hanging at Times, Times e.V., Berlin, DE
Balcuzzi, Cramer, Buenos Aires, AR
✿ 2011 ✿
Benedictions, Punctuation Programme, Limoncello, London, GB
Keep Floors and Passages Clear, White Columns, New York, US
Rhododendron, W139, Amsterdam, NL
✿ 2010 ✿
The Smart Frrridge (Chilly Forecast for Internet Fridge), Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz
End Note, Archive Kabinett/Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (as XYM)
At Work With - XYM at the Nordic Pavilion, 2010 Architecture Biennial, Venice, IT (as XYM)
Translation as a Structuring Principle: If A Then B, Gentili Apri, Berlin, DE
Kiss-You-Through-The-Phone, Paloma Presents, Zürich, CH
✿ 2008 ✿
Death of Samantha / Season of Glass, New Jerseyy, Basel, CH
✿ 2007 ✿
The Theatre, (as International Festival in collaboration with Mårten Spångberg and Tor Lindstrand), Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, AT
My Market, (as International Festival in collaboration with Mårten Spångberg and Tor Lindstrand), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE
CAPITALISM! All or Nothing (as International Festival in collaboration with Mårten Spångberg and Tor Lindstrand), Cologne Art Fair, Cologne, DE
RESIDENCIES2023 Frans Masereel Centre for Print, Kasterlee, BE
2021 Frans Masereel Centre for Print, Kasterlee, BE
2018 WIELS, Brussels, BE
2018 FRAC Lorraine, Metz, FR
2016 Fondation Boghossian, Villa Empain, Brussels, BE
2016 21er Haus/Belvedere Museum, Vienna, AT
2014 Pinakothek der Moderne, Kunstzeitraum/Südhausbau, Munich, DE
2013 BAR Project, Barcelona, ES
2008 Fondazione Ratti, Como, IT
selected ARTICLES / REVIEWS✿2021✿
Henry, Max, “Leda and the Swan”, Spike Magazine Online, June✿2017✿
“Gut gepaart, runde Dopplungen, harte Tritte”, review solo exhibition Booby at Croy Nielsen, Vienna, Falter 50/17, December
"Art as Labour in the optimised + ever-present renderings of ourselves", review of solo exhibition Booby at Croy Nielsen Vienna. AQNB (aqnb.com) Text by Karim Crippa.
"It’s not a refusal. It’s that, basically, nothing was possible". Interview by Kristian Vistrup Madsen, Studio International, August 2017
"Marlie Mul: this exhibition has been cancelled." Text by Lauren Velvick, Art Monthly, September 2017✿2016✿
Mul, Marlie, “Marlie Mul on Rosa Bonheur”, e-flux Online, October✿2015✿
"Deep Screen at Parc Saint Lédger, Pouguese-les-Eaux”, Mousse Online, May 22. Text by Le Houezec, Camille and Villemont, Jocelyn.
Marlie Mul, Vilma Gold, Artforum, May, pp. 386 – 387, Text by Elisa Shaar.
"Art In The Age Of…Energy and Raw Material… at Witte de With, Rotterdam”, Mousse Online, April 29
"Marlie Mul: Arbeidsvitaminen”, review solo exhibition Arbeidsvitaminen at Vilma Gold, London, ArtReview, April, pp. 115. Text by Sean Ashton.
"Marlie Mul at Vilma Gold”, review solo exhibition Arbeidsvitaminen at Vilma Gold, London Dazed and Confused Online, March 2015. Text by Francesca Gavin.
"Marlie Mul”, review solo exhibition Arbeidsvitaminen at Vilma Gold, London, Artforum, Summer
"Marlie Mul”, review solo exhibition Arbeidsvitaminen at Vilma Gold, London, Mousse Magazine, Summer✿2014✿
Beeson, John, “Relative Distance”, Castillo/Corrales Today #1, March
ICA website / https://journal.ica.art/posts/alexander-scrimgeour-speaks-marlie-mul – Alexander Scrimgeour interviews Marlie Mul (for ICA project Journal, June)
Kherbeck, William, “Vilma Gold: One After One”, Port Magazine Online, 24 May
“Picture Spread: Marlie Mul, Poppin’ Pollock”, Texte Zur Kunst #95, September
✿2013✿
Larios, Pablo, “General Muck Interview with Marlie Mul”, Metropolis M, Winter
Ferris, Laura McLean, “Indifferent Objects”, Art Monthly, July/August
Beeson, John, “Marlie Mul – Boneless Banquet for One”, review solo show Boneless Banquet for One at Croy Nielsen, Berlin, Artforum, Summer
Archey, Karen, “Post-i-Meta-Hyper-Materiality”, Kaleidoscope, March
D’Aurizo, Michele, “MEET Marlie Mull”, Kaleidoscope Blog, February 15
Review show “XYMEMORY” at Arcadia Missa, London, Art Review, January
✿2012✿
D’Aurizio, Michele, “Marlie Mul – So We Came Anyways, In Barrels”, Review solo show So We Came Anyways, In Barrels at Fluxia, Milano, Kaleidoscope, December
de Ruyter, Thibaut, “Frieze Focus: Marlie Mul, Smoking, Kissing and Storing Data”, Frieze d/e, November
Ishikawa, Carlos, review group show “Net Narrative”, London, Frieze, November
Burke, Harry, “In Conversation with Marlie Mul”, CMDPlus, June
Larios, Pablo, “Warenwahn/Pure Products Go Crazy”, Frieze d/e, June
“Upcoming artist of the year The Netherlands 2012”, Grazia (The Netherlands edition), January
✿2011✿
Gavin, Francesca, “XYMEMORY”, Dazed and Confused, November
Gavin, Francesca, “Instant Object, XYMEMORY USB Sticks”, Dazed and Confused, April
Too, Jian-Xing, Review solo exhibition “Your Wet Sleeve in My Neck”, Artforum, February
✿2010✿
“Marlie Mul – Your Wet Sleeve in My Neck”, Slash/Paris, Online, December
✿2009✿
Schlaegel, Andreas, “You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello relational Aesthetics”, Spike Art Quarterly, December
“Dan Solbach, Tobias Madison, Emanuel Rossetti, Daniel Baumann, New Jerseyy’s Top Ten”, Artforum, November