Philip Mueller’s online solo exhibition, NRT - SUNGLASSES AFTER DARK (Naxos Racing Team) observes the infamous Black Flamingo Sad Boys as they seek new refuge on the Naxos island racetrack to fuel their ceaseless desires for fun, drama and danger. The paintings were made during his stay in the island of Naxos, Greece.
There has always been a Dionysus cult for the Greek god of wine and ecstasy - who is emblematic of the lifestyles the BFSBs lead: one that is pleasure-seeking and self-destructive, and were made during the artist’s stay on the island of Naxos, Greece.
Philip Mueller’s works are an ode to Naxos’s history, working into his paintings as much myth that exists in the location. Mueller’s paintings are diffused with a nearly rose-tinted Romanticism - sun-dappled greenery, greens the color of secret pools, and vibrant, glowing sunsets. Where the tragedy of mythology ends, he re-imagines their context in the present and the past to intertwine both narratives into a contemporary one.
As an intervention to the surreal sceneries, Mueller’s graffiti-strewn locations are metaphorical for the deterioration of beauty, such as the crashed cars that are embedded in the island’s terrain. The wreckages are allegorical for the protagonists’ exhaustive need for speed, which denotes a fatal end, in their futile pursuit of more for more.
