Mark Mulhern's, "Gatherings," Reviewed on Shepherd Express by Shane McAdams

*to see the original review on the Shepherd Express website, please click HERE

Mark Mulhern Captures a Party Mood at Tory Folliard's 'Gatherings'

by: Shane McAdams - Nov. 03, 2020

Mark Mulhern’s GATHERING, Oil on Linen, 36" x 44"

For a moment, Mark Mulhern’s exhibition “Gatherings” at Tory Folliard made me forget I was indoors during a pandemic, socially-distanced and wearing a mask…which caused my glasses to slowly fog, obscuring my view of the same jubilant paintings that seduced me into a dislocated daydream in the first place. This waking experience, backdropped by a retreating Wisconsin autumn twilight, was almost painfully seductive. But only almost.

The paintings in “Gatherings” didn’t transport me simply because they happen to be on lawns populated by convivial figures, as only Mulhern paints them, but rather because they’re the very essence of such a moment. As shamelessly social as a Renoir boating party. All drinks, noshing, and conversation. The title of the 5 x 6-foot painting Decadent Party confirms this for sure. It features two women in evening gowns and pearls locked in a conversation, in front of a finely manicured table offering cake and finger foods, and a uniformed champagne server in the foreground. Pandemics, or even a movie about one, are the last thing on the tongues of these casual partygoers.

The eponymously titled painting Gathering continues the motif of a table of hors d’oeuvres foregrounding a middle ground of elegant but dignified revelers. Lowback-gowned ladies converse on a lawn, as uniformed help fuel their enthusiasms with drinks delivered on trays. Colorful arrays of edible arrangements, patterns on clothing, and dots of string lights whip the whole scene into a confetti of visual activity, reflective of the social effervescence within the mixer itself.

Arranging the Cakes

Despite their being drawn from the same general setting, smaller and more pared-back images break up the repetition of activity in the larger paintings. An almost Diebenkorn-esque composition titled Arranging the Cakes features an uplifting background of rectilinear shapes that go almost abstract, backdropping the more recognizable subject matter in the lower half of the composition. In the foreground, a familiar but more solitary a woman politely surveys a table of party food on white linen. We’ve seen her before, in Gathering, with her sage, red, and white dress, leading us to assume that the exhibition is likely drawn from a single event.

Mulhern’s particular manner of image-making and paint handling is almost idiosyncratic and seductive enough to make one lose their bearings and overlook the recurring place setting. And he seems perfectly happy to allow this to happen. Securing a suitably lively armature on which to hang his loosely painted subjects seems to be his ultimate aim. Like Monet did with haystacks and the aforementioned Renoir did with boating parties, Mulhern’s work feels obligated to his documentation only as far as it lets him play with material delights of giving them a new life in paint and color.

Material chops aside, Mulhern’s naïve figures in “Gathering” reside in a gathering unavoidably evocative of the salad days of our recent and retreating past. And given the state of our collective psyches at the moment, such decadence runs the risk of striking an awkward tone. But then again, I don’t think anyone’s yearning for profound reminders of forced austerity at the moment. America very understandably loved Busby Berkeley films in the 1930s because the real world was offering more than enough cold hard reality. I’m sure I won’t be the only one relishing the chance to feel included in a lush, gurgling, and boozy outdoor gathering, close-talking, and gesticulating with abandon in a moment of pure social possibility. Thinking about it almost makes me wish I had contact lenses, which would’ve allowed me to stay inside the fantasy at Tory Folliard for a few moments longer.