Chef de Mulu

In Physical and Chemical, Chef de Mulu disassembles the human visage into shifted fragments: at the very top the base of a nose with visible nostrils, beneath it a dark-violet eyebrow, bold red female lips, and multiple suggested eyelids with recurring lashes. The pieces overlap and slide as if several viewpoints were visible at once. As in Cubism, perspectives are placed side by side, yet the gesture remains abstract expressionist – with gestural brushwork, layering and overpainting, open composition, spontaneous chromatic decisions, scratch marks, and transparent glazes.

The human face embodies the physical part — as contour, fragment, and gestural imprint — while color denotes the chemical: reactions acting upon the body. Red sets impulse peaks, passion, and alarm; yellow–orange heightens attention and keeps the surface in vibrating tension; green cools, balances, and lets both regeneration and ambivalence show through. Between these poles a rhythm arises of heating and cooling, flare-ups and clarifications.

Thus the portrait becomes a process: a human face and its emotions assemble from perspectives and bursts of color; the face is not rendered naturalistically, but experienced and felt from different areas — in states that affect the external viewer in more than purely visual ways.