5 & 5 with Armin Mühsam
The Studios Inc. Assistant Gallery Manager Jaede Bayala recently chatted with Armin Mühsam, new Studios Inc Artist-in-Residence, as part of our new series highlighting A.I.R.’s and their works.
Mühsam is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, drawing, and sculpture.
Q: Architecture seems to be a big influence on your work. Is there a specific architectural period that you feel most drawn to?
A: No and yes. No, because I am keenly interested in history and the history of ideas, and in that sense, I view all architecture as emblematic of humanity’s relation to the non-human environment and therefore as a physical manifestation of the different worldviews that produce these buildings. On the other hand, yes, specifically Ancient Greek and Roman, as well as Modernist and Postmodernist architecture.
Q: When you are crafting a space within a painting, do you imagine how it functions? Are they lived in, abandoned?
A: To a certain extent, I have to imagine how a space functions because I render it representationally, but I never imagine a narrative or what kinds of person might inhabit it. The spaces in my paintings represent ideas, not specific locations.
Q: You have several pieces that utilize positive and negative space in an engaging way. How do you figure out your compositions? Do you pre-plan or figure it out as you go?
A: Any good work of art utilizes positive and negative space in an engaging way. With every new composition, I start with something pre-existing, a found object in the widest sense of the word. Everything originates from something observed which I then subject to various degrees of transformation.
Q: How do your collages influence your paintings, or vice versa?
A: At more than one hundred years old, the collage is still both a disruptor and guarantor of tradition. It is continually of the current moment, quoting and sampling, just as every other cultural product in contemporary life quotes and samples. For painters like me who are steeped in representation, the collage presents a practical and a philosophical challenge: The flatness of the cut shape is both more abstract than its illusionistically painted equivalent and more real than any painted representation of the objective world. Indeed, a collage element’s actuality is the very reason why its incorporation maximizes the level of abstraction, which is why the collage proves to be such a valuable catalyst for me. It expands my visual vocabulary; it makes my colors more vibrant; it enriches and adds nuance to my textures; it frees my practice to express transformation and playful searching. By the same token, any painting can give rise to a new round of collaging – that’s how the creative process works.
Q: Rolling hills and wood grain are ever present in your paintings, how does the natural world play a part in your practice?
A: Without the natural world, I would not exist. The natural world is the axiomatic given to which I compare everything I do. Back when I painted landscapes, rolling hills were indeed a constituent part of my aesthetic, but not so much now. Wood grain still is, for two reasons: On the one hand, it represents processed trees, i.e. living organisms that humans have turned into lumber for their own purposes, so the wood grain is a comment on the power technology has given humans over the natural world. On the other hand, the wood grain in my paintings references Cubism, which I regard as one of the greatest achievements of Western culture. Originally embodying a conceptually iconoclastic attitude, Picasso’s and Braque’s pioneering papiers collés, which often featured mass-printed wood grain, have become a method as well as a technology, and, rather than destroying it, another proof of the vitality of painting.
Learn more about Mühsam, his work, and practice at https://arminmuhsam.com/ and be sure to visit Studios Inc | 2025, March 7th - May 10th at The Studios Inc Exhibition Hall to see “Condensed Associations”.
