LAS VEGAS.- The Las Vegas Art Museum presents the exhibition, Adventures in a Temperate Climate: A Retrospective of Paintings by Martin Mull, through August 25, at 9600 West Sahara Avenue. The exhibition will feature 44 paintings by Los Angeles artist Martin Mull, dating from 1984 to 2006, including oil paintings on linen and oil paintings on canvas. It marks the third installment in LVAM’s Contemporary Series, an ongoing series dedicated to one-person exhibitions by emerging and internationally recognized contemporary artists. After the exhibition closes at LVAM, it travels to the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University, September 11 – October 7, 2006, and The Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, October 28, 2006 – January 21, 2007.

“Mull’s works focus on a critique of Modern culture. They have received substantial and positive attention from critics in recent years,” says Libby Lumpkin, director of the Las Vegas Art Museum. “He tends to temper the cool intellectualism and biting critique typical of Postmodern art with images imbued with emotion and psychological depth, and has been grouped with other artists who develop paintings out of pastiche images appropriated from magazines and other sources in popular culture, such as Mark Tansey, David Salle, and Neo Rauch.” According to Lumpkin, “The exhibition also surveys the changes in style that have taken place in Mull’s work over a period of more than twenty years.”

Mull was born in Chicago, Illinois and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design in the late 1960s. His works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Total Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea; and other institutions in the United States and abroad. Mull lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

The exhibition is co-organized by Libby Lumpkin, Director, Las Vegas Art Museum and Director of Design Discourse, International Institute of Modern Letters, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Tina Yapelli, Director, The University Art Gallery at San Diego State University. Works in the exhibition are loaned from institutions, galleries, and private collections. The exhibition is made possible by generous donations from The Joyce Mack Exhibitions Fund, The James and Michelle Zeiter Exhibitions Fund, the LVAM Members’ Fund, and anonymous donors.