Opening Reception: Saturday, September 15, 6-9pm
On view September 15—October 26, 2018
Location: 818 S Spring Street, Los Angeles

Learn more AT www.mugellogallery.com
OR follow on Instagram AT @mugellogallery & @wyatt.mills

Mugello Gallery is proud to announce Pareidolia, an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Wyatt Mills. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 15, at Mugello in Downtown LA with artist in attendance. This will be Mills’ first solo-exhibition since returning from a two year residency in Berlin.

Exploring the complexities of human perception, Pareidolia refers to a psychological phenomenon of cognitive interpretation. It describes the tendency of the human mind to imagine or perceive a familiar pattern or object where none previously existed. By using a portrait as the foundational subject Mills creates a sandbox from which viewers are forced to dissect and rebuild several personalities while confronting the complex emotions existing concurrently within each work.

In Mills’ process, his paintings are continually re-inventing themselves in each passing moment with no linear path of beginning to end. In a constant exploration of awareness, Mills practices patient slow moments with frantic movements, often interpreting noises heard in the street under his studio into visual renditions. There is little hesitation to cover pre-existing layers or faces, as this frequently invites spontaneity back into the equation, discovering a new dimension to the subject that could only be found by destroying it. In the same way that the past is behind us, but still weighted on our shoulders, the prerequisite layers on these paintings continue to flicker through and exist in the final piece. The abundant amount of expressions and gestures stacked on top of each other reflect on how we grow and form identities, endlessly remaking or discovering ourselves.

I want to paint beyond what one thinks portrait traditionally should look like. I want to portray an honest snapshot of a perception in the present.
— Wyatt Mills