In 2010 schreef de gerenommeerde kunstcritica Robertha Smith een lovende resencie over zijn solo show 'FLOWERS' in New York. Dit werk volgde uit die serie. Het canvas is in zijn studio in New York.
ART IN REVIEW, NYTIMES GERBEN MULDER: ‘Flowers’
By ROBERTA SMITH Published:
December 2, 2010
Gerben Mulder, a Dutch artist born in 1972, showed lush‐surfaced, slightly kinky paintings of young girls on bright backgrounds for his first New York show, at this gallery in 2006. Now he’s back with large, splintering paintings of flowers sort of in vases — a big
improvement. He is doing his own version of a kind of faux‐retro‐Modernism‐redux practiced by a wide range of northern European
painters at the moment.
Christoph Ruckhäberle, Thomas Zipp and Volker Hueller — all Germans — are among the very different sensibilities in this arena.
While their historical loyalties tend to lean toward German Expressionism, Balthus mixed with Manzoni (weird but true), and Russian Constructivism, Mr. Mulder seems to be mining the heretofore unnoticed gap between Raoul Dufy and Jackson Pollock, which brings him, unexpectedly, into the vicinity of the American painter David Bates.
In any event, these keyed‐up bouquets bristle. Each dashlike stroke — which is most often a petal or a leaf — exists separately, suspended in space, like a kind of exclamation point. The results are unquestionably lively — an explosion of paint, brushwork and cheerful flowers — and will look good above couches, although you may not necessarily want to turn your back on them. Who knows where things will land.