Silvia Muleo is an artist working in video, painting, and installation.
Following in the footsteps of old italian masters of the past, and modern and contemporary photographers of today, her practice interrogates the viewer on the light which surrounds ourselves today and what ‘reality’ it’s shaping.
Blue Lights (Marquee), 44 x 25 inches each, diptych oil on canvas, 2024
‘N3 (Front)’ video still, 3:35 min, 2023.
Video, painting, and installations are informed in Muleo’s work by a deep photographic research: a rich archive of photographs both shot by her and found, which set the base for the formal vocabulary of her work. A vocabulary that takes from the language of nature as well as from the language of human made models, like mobile screens.
Full Dilation and Complete Contraction, 60 x 153 inches, oil on canvas, 2023
‘Down is Down’ video still, 0:54 min, 2024. Audio by: Davide Martiello
Among the most influential photographers of Muleo’s practice are Luigi Ghirri ( Cardboard Landscapes ), Thomas Demand ( Model Studies, and ‘Pacific Sun’ video piece), and Joseph Koudelka ( Exiles ). The act of daily photo-documentation of unique incidents of light, results in two forms in Muleo’s practice: video and painting. In these works light can appear as a soft benevolent stranger or an intrusive passenger or momentary disruption.
Being born in 1998, Muleo has developed her sense of identity immersed in screens just as much as nature. The sun’s light and screen’s light spilling into each others and becoming at moments indistinguishable in the eyes of the young artist. The missing ability to draw a distinct boundary between the two and the indecisiveness of which one to rely on in everyday life leads Muleo’s research and inevitably lands her in the area of interest of social media.
The Mirror’s Color, 30 x 17 inches, oil on canvas, 2023
Muleo’s compositions reveal a dialectical tension between control and intrusion. The control comes through her careful planning of frame’s size and proportions while the intrusion is the result of patiently waiting for light to distort, double, and actively erasing elements in the frame.
Silvia Muleo’s research is only destined to grow as our relationship to light grows in complexity with every technological advancement.