
Fight-or-Flight
2019
Fight-or-Flight, a 2019 woodblock print by Jill Mulleady, places a rat astride two galloping horses as they soar above a burning Manhattan skyline, staging urban apocalypse with an unexpected, almost sardonic protagonist. The image crackles with chromatic intensity, Mulleady's application of vivid color amplifying the urgency of the scene and giving the composition an almost cinematic charge. Formally, the work invites direct comparison to Albrecht Dürer's 1498 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, drawing on the woodcut tradition's capacity for dense, expressive linework while redirecting its iconography toward a distinctly contemporary anxiety. The rat, long a symbol of urban survival and adaptability, becomes here something closer to an antihero navigator of catastrophe, embodying the tension between panic and perseverance that gives the work its title. Mulleady created this piece using found wood, a material practice consistent with her broader approach to the medium, in which reclaimed furniture and salvaged panels lend each print a physical history before a single mark is made. This example is a variation on the suite of four works featured in her concurrent exhibition at Swiss Institute, making it a singular object within a larger conceptual framework rather than a straight edition. Measuring nearly 150 centimeters in height, the work commands significant physical presence and rewards close attention to both its technical execution and its layered symbolism. Mulleady, born in Montevideo in 1980 and now based in Los Angeles, is represented in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and the Hammer Museum, and participated in the 2019 Venice Biennale, situating this work at a particularly visible moment in her career.
- Medium
- Woodblock print
- Sheet
- Signed
- Yes
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