ARTIST STATEMENT
The objects I create exist as a relatively permanent record of moments, offering passage to an intermediate space between worlds. Hovering between shifting planes, they describe multiple realms, dimensions, and volume or vacuum. My paintings appear to be in constant motion through layered transparency, color gradation, and repeated forms, employing a variety of media including oil, acrylic, charcoal, and watercolor.
My sculptures collaborate with and amplify the physical flatness of the paintings, playfully posing questions about the work’s own imagined origin and history, material composition, and density. These works are solid structures covered in canvas, composed of a variety of media such as a silver leaf, limestone, charcoal, encaustic paint, aluminum, or copper. Alternating between seemingly weightless and impossibly dense, some works echo invisible forces of nature, while others reference geologic strata or relics from ancient civilizations on earth or beyond.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ahavani Mullen is a visual artist who constructs paintings, sculptures, and installations which have evolved from silence, and navigates a space between the seen and the unseen.
Ahavani has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Tusen Takk, the Macedonia Institute, Vermont Studio Center and Hypatia Trust. Her honors include awards from James Rondeau, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and grants from 3Arts, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Illinois Arts Council, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include those at CIRCA Gallery, Gallery 1871, Olivet Nazarene University, and One River School of Art + Design. Other exhibition venues include Northwestern University, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Rockford Art Museum, Robert Morris University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Freeport Art Museum, and the University of Maryland. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally and is included in numerous private and public collections. Born in Minneapolis, MN, she received a B.A. from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. Ahavani is currently based in Chicago.
© Ahavani Mullen