Swiss Institute – serie

The first major monograph on Jill Mulleady, whose paintings feature humans and animals enacting their instinctive psychological reactions to ever-present threats of dangerIn the paintings and woodcuts of Swiss artist Jill Mulleady (born 1980), characters enact the physiological stress reactions of “fight or flight”: either adopting extreme or violent survival methods, or retreating into isolation. Mulleady's work roots out fantasies, motivations and fears in order to depict a landscape of polarization and crisis. Ancient mythologies and recent histories are reanimated in her feverish work with an enduring, twisted force. And yet, opposed and extreme, the figures and scenes featured also point to futures in which beings are pushed into marginal spaces, suggesting an ominous threat at civilization’s center. Fight or Flight is the first major monograph on Jill Mulleady, surveying her artistic output over the last 10 years. It features newly commissioned essays by curator Laura McLean-Ferris, author Ottessa Moshfegh and anthropologist Michael Taussig, and a conversation between Mosfegh and Mulleady.

Immersive installations of found objects and sound machines create an experiential score incorporating feedback and distortionSwiss artist Jan Vorisek (born 1987) works across sculpture, video and sound to create site-specific installations that examine formal hierarchies through the delineation of space. In assemblages of found materials and sound-producing devices, he explores the fluctuation of noise as a medium for information. The multitudes of the smallest details of Vorisek’s practice provide, just as the complexities of the room-size installation do, an intricate, layered and endlessly unfolding potential for encounter and revelation. The essays in the artist's first-ever monograph, alongside image portfolios of the exhibitions they explore and an appendix that features photos and documentation of Vorisek’s performances, recordings and ephemera, grant us unprecedented access to the private fictions that the work reveals.