Eva Mueller

Eva Mueller, Tarmac FRA 17:30:40, 2009, Digital Print

2013

Eva Mueller is a Bavarian-born, American artist, who made New York her home in 1990. She is both a commercial photographer and a fine artist, whose work incorporates a variety of cultural influences from her native Germany, including Bauhaus and Modernism. Characterized by their minimalist composition, dark humor, muted but potent glamour and fantastical conceits, her photographs often have an unusual twist or striking detail that elicits a startled double-take. In the new series, BLACK FACE, Mueller reveals a deep fascination with the ways that gender, age and race converge and diverge and challenges the viewer to look more deeply and question their preconceptions. Mueller currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. BLACK FACE is an ongoing portrait series of people of all genders, races and ethnicities, whose faces are painted pure black. Black, because it takes us back to the beginning of our race, the human race, in Africa. Also, because it is the anti-color, it swallows all light, distractions vanish and only pure form remains. By zooming into each face, not showing hair or any other reference to cultural and racial heritage, the eyes become the only portal for the viewer.