Anne Muntges

The Glowing Desert

Jan. 23—Mar. 21, 2021

Curator: Lynn Hai

The Glowing Desert includes a series of works from Muntges’s experience in the Roswell Artist-in-Residence project in New Mexico in 2019, into which she incorporated facets of local aspects. The area of Roswell has an arid or semiarid continental climate characterized by light precipitation totals, abundant sunshine and low relative humidities. Located in the ecoregion of Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert in North America, the landscape there appears rough terrain and sparse vegetation, and nurtures typical hardy desert plants like cacti and succulents.

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Budding Cactus, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, wire, plastic, ceramic pot, About 2 x 2 x 5 in. each.

$100.00 Each

In Muntges’ works, the drawn lines encasing each cactus, blade of grass, and rock she witnessed and touched weave up a tangible world to feel, smell and move through. This immersive drawing environment becomes a new reality. It challenges one’s sense of familiarity with each of the pieces and invites one to experience it anew.

Left

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Variety Planter, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, wire, ceramic pot, 5 x 5 x 9.5 in.

Right

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Barrel Cactus Planter, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, plastic, rock, ceramic pot, 6 x 6 x 10 in.

$400 Each

Anne Muntges, Untitled Rug, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, paint, fiber, 65.5x48.5 in.

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Pod, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, paper, wire, plastic, plaster, rock, ceramic pot, 46 x 46 x 19 in.

Anne Muntges, Sun, 2020. Neon Sign, 19.5 x 18 in.

In Muntges’ drawings, sculptures and installations, she recreates portions of the environments she inhabits by collecting the pieces of her daily encounters. Her obsessive process of drawing lines blends sensations between two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds.

Left

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Mini Saguaro, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, plastic, ceramic pot, 4 x 4 x 11 in.

Right

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Grass, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, plastic, ceramic pot, 4 x 4 x 5 in.

$250.00 Each

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Still life #03/#04/#05, 2020. Pen, ink, foam core. From Left to Right: 31 x 11 in.; 26 x 11 in.; 39 x 16 in.

$500.00 Each

Each object used in her works is primed white to create a new blank palette for black drawn lines composed of acrylic paint. The final works create an interactive black and white world that functions as a living and breathing drawing. Through every stroke in drawing, Muntges senses and captures the existence of things. She perceives the hidden context of the environment and people behind every artifact or manhandled objects through her repetitive behavior of drawing every line—they are traces left by her perceptual experience and unceasing contemplation.

Left

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Little Prickly Pear, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, plastic, ceramic pot, 3 x 3 x 10 in.

Right

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Ivy, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, foam, plastic, ceramic pot, 9 x 9 x 8 in.

$250.00 Each

Materially, each part of the installations in The Glowing Desert is an artificial replication of its counterpart: Cacti made of foam, plants made of silk, paper and metal, rocks cast in paper-machè, and ground made of dyed black sand. The drawn lines encapsulate Muntges’s observation by flattening the time and space of the temporal context with a unified language. Thus, the space constituted by the objects becomes monumental by freezing momentary beings and highlighting the obsessiveness of perceiving.

Anne Muntges, Glowing Desert Artifact-Small Saguaro, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, gesso, paint, paper, foam, wire, plastic, ceramic pot, 5 x 5 x 10 in.

Anne Muntges, Untitled Chair, 2020. Acrylic paint marker, paint, chair, 16 x 17 x 34 in.

The Glowing Desert uses drawn lines to re-characterize objects and to provide an alternative interpretation of them other than the daily experience. It challenges the audiences to perceive the familiar objects under another language in an unfamiliar way.

“I think, what I do is very observational work in different ways, even though the bodies of work don’t seem often related. It’s how I understand and where I exist. It is an ever-shifting thing, the things we own are in a constant rotation,” Muntges said.

Anne Muntges

b. 1982, Denver, Colorado

Graduated from Kansas City Art Institute (B.F.A.) in Printmaking in 2005 and the University at Buffalo (M.F.A.) in Printmaking in 2008. Based in Brooklyn, she works with a wide range of media, including highly detailed drawings, prints, and installation. She has been exhibited at the Children’s Museum of Arts, New York (2017), the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2010), the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, New York (2018), and many other spaces nationally. Most recently her work has been growing in the studio where she is a resident with the Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey (2020).

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