Lucy Mullican

Sensed as well as seen

March 31 - May 21, 2022

Olympia is delighted to present Sensed As Well As Seen, Lucy Mullican’s first solo exhibition in New York City. Mullican immerses herself in mediums of permanence and transience in found objects, embroidery, photography, painting and drawings done with natural homemade and artisanal pigments. Her curiosity is rooted in nature: land, water, and sky, from which she abstracts elements that intuitively evolve into familiar shapes, recalling existence and the soul.

Her project is to find one’s place in the world through stories imagined in the personality of objects and our fleeting relationship to them: the vanishing photograph, the color of natural dyes on surfaces that light will take back; the imprint of feet walking the earth washed by water, the time of day on a hillside, the stillness of an empty house—histories that constantly connect us to the world, the continuum of the past, present and future, the balance of fragility, spirit and strength.

January 22 2022

What am I looking at 

When I am walking the ground where others 

Leave their mark 

The soul of the foot 

Our individual print 

Is left behind 

Cemented in the city forever

Who are they 

I will not see them 

I am close to where they have walked 

I see a single shoe 

Where is its pair 

How did they lose each other 

They are ghosts 

Lying on the ground 

Far from the soul and spirit 

That housed them 

Make a painting on slate 

Roof tiles 

Protecting the inside from the outside

They are from the ground 

Getting closer to the sky 

A relic 

I see how each one has a presence

Their own personality 

Using minerals 

Natural things we pass by 

But cant see 

Colors from the earth 

That will not last 

Paint the sky 

Mountain 

Water 

Tree 

Ground 

These living images 

That light will take back 

Fade away

Are they part of an island 

A place where we all go 

We are all on our own island 

That connects us 

Through the water 

It is getting smaller and smaller 

-Lucy Mullican

Lucy Mullican (b. 1994) received her BFA in Studio Art from the Glasgow School of Art (2019). Recent solo exhibitions include: Galeria Mascota (Mexico City, Mexico, 2023); Villa Magdalena (San Sebastian, Spain, 2022); Olympia (New York, NY, 2022). Selected group shows include: Pace (Seoul, South Korea, 2024); Ronchini (London, United Kingdom, 2023); Carriage Trade (New York, NY, 2021). Mullican's work has appeared in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, and Hyperallergic. She lives and works between New York City and Berlin.