Newman Popiashvili Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent works by New York-based Dutch artist Gerben Mulder. The title of the show, Flowers, comes from the subject matter of the paintings completed within the past two years.

While his many interpretations of the form can be plainly seen as divergent instances, each is an explosive and revelatory mark within a deeply psychological current. Created from memory, Mulder’s consecutive works have the flexible, emotional complexity of dreams and the subconscious. Every transformation - in painting, work on paper and collage - uncovers the ambivalent, calculated and often delighted desertion of the confinements of genre painting, evoking reverberant relations between the moody, anxious paintings of his Dutch compatriot Vincent van Gogh, the adorned interiors of Henri Mattise, the abstract expressionism of Joan Mitchell and Pop serialism.

If one must call on Mulder’s flowers to represent anything, it is painting. The still life is is positioned as a mirror to separate states of mind and in steady effort to negotiate structure within the disarray of isolated emotional events. As such, their symbolic dimension lies not in their traditional capacity to portray the transitory nature of life, but the enduring character of our un-still lives.

Gerben Mulder had solo exhibitions at K4, Munich, Galerie Michael Janssen in Cologne and Fortes/Vilaca in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Galerie Akinci in Amsterdam, Liverpool biennale and Akron Museum of Art.