Dave Muller A Forest (2004) 11" x 14" 150 Original Drawings Hand Colored Signed & Numbered

Dave Muller is multi-talented force in LA's art scene... and beyond. His activities are related by the notions of "amorphous authorship," the identity of artists, and how artists are presented by art world structures. Dave plays with these structures by offering a playful alternative that embraces and critiques the social situations in which contemporary dialogues about art take place. Inspired by flyers created by fans of indie-rock bands, Dave produces stunning watercolors based on the actual exhibition announcements of artists he admires. Acts of homage, he transforms and reinterprets them with wry humor and conceptual resonance. Additionally, Dave continues to host his much beloved Three Day Weekends: an on-going nomadic art party in which Dave invites artists he likes to exhibit in any space he can find: be it a proper gallery or a freight elevator. Three Day Weekends have moved around the world with Dave, with events in New York, Houston, Vienna, Tokyo, and London. Artforum Magazine ranked his solo exhibits at Bard College and LA's Hammer Museum among the top ten shows of 2002. Recently, Dave's debut at the 72nd Whitney Biennial in New York was hailed by critics and visitors alike as the "standout installation" of the year. About This Print In keeping with his interest of tweaking artworld presentation systems and surrendering authorship to collaborative projects, Dave decided to play with the structure of "the artists' print" for this year's Phantom Ball. Since a print is (as he put it), simply "an artists copying himself," Dave thought it would be fun to side-step mechanical reproduction and (instead) create 150 original black-line drawings of the same tree, over and over again. These trees were a dominant element in his installation at the Whitney Biennial, titled " . . . That Hollywood Adage: be nice to the people on the way up, because they're the same people on the way down." The black and white drawings were then hand-colored by a collaborative team of volunteer artists who were instructed to initial each piece with green ink after they applied color to it. Several artists worked on each piece, thus transforming these simple drawings into a collaborative artwork that effortlessly encompasses the major themes of Dave's artmaking practice.