Detail of Jeanette Mundt Smart and Bold, 2022, oil on canvas; 320 × 1300 cm. Dimensions variable

Jeanette Mundt

Smart and Bold

Art Basel Unlimited 2022

Jeanette Mundt refuses to commit to one style of painting. Her dynamic, formally omnivorous practice mirrors the ever-changing velocity of culture. Mundt’s lush paintings freely tap a variety of input, ranging from Google image searches, Flickr accounts, magazines, and personal photographs to her own exhibition documentation. Each series that she creates begins as an attempt to confront the general nature of images on the internet, particularly the seemingly endless mutability that results when an image enters the digital world. In her different bodies of work, Mundt combines iconic references with others that are more personal and intimate in her quest to perpetually reconfigure the image—gesturing towards how our understanding is always in flux and therefore we can’t possibly be consistent in our seeing, in our psychic space.

Jeanette Mundt (b. 1982) lives and works in New York. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally at venues including the New Museum, New York; G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; and Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux, among others. Mundt’s work is also included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

Installation view Art Basel Unlimited 2022

Installation view Art Basel Unlimited 2022

Installation view Art Basel Unlimited 2022

“The flowers are a way to access the back of the head. The flowers allow for this expressionistic approach, where I can kind of just go. You know, we’ve all looked at enough flowers in our lifetimes—I can paint the shape of a flower. And so, then I can confidently move through that space and allow for most of my head to turn off and go into this trance-like place.”