MACRO presents Representing the Work. 1972–2026, a lecture-performance by Matt Mullican, presented as part of a project conceived and curated by Piero Varroni for Studio Varroni – Eos Libri d’Artista.
Active since the early 1970s, Mullican has developed throughout his career a vocabulary of signs, diagrams, pictograms and symbols through which he investigates systems of representation and the organisation of reality. His practice spans different media, from performance and environmental installation to sculpture and digital graphics, and develops around the relationship between reality and fiction, subject and object, conscious and unconscious, investigating the relationship between objective reality and subjective perception.
In Representing the Work. 1972–2026, Mullican looks back at his practice, beginning with his earliest works from 1972, through a lecture accompanied by images of his works and video materials. The presentation moves through different periods and languages of his practice, extending to his experiments with digital animation and virtual reality. The lecture-performance will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.
The event at MACRO precedes the opening, on Friday 13 November, of the solo exhibition Le forme del pensiero / The Forms of Thought at Studio Varroni. The exhibition presents a constellation of photographs, drawings, texts, images and diagrams, offering a different yet complementary opportunity to engage with the artist’s practice.
The event will take place in the Auditorium.
Free admission until capacity is reached.
The lecture-performance will be held in English.
MATT MULLICAN (Santa Monica, California, 1951) lives and works between New York and Berlin. One of the leading figures of international post-conceptual art, he studied at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where he received his BFA in 1974. His practice spans different media and forms of expression, investigating processes of perception, representation and the subjective construction of experience. Since the mid-1970s, he has also developed a performance practice that includes works carried out under hypnosis, through which he explores different states of consciousness and identity. He has participated in three editions of documenta (1982, 1993, 1997), the São Paulo Biennial (2008) and the 55th Venice Biennale (2013). Major solo exhibitions include those at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (2018), the de Young Museum in San Francisco (2020) and That Person’s Heaven at Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo (2025). In 2022, he received the Possehl Prize for International Art. His works are held in the collections of major international institutions, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate and the Centre Pompidou.