Gallery

These painted figures have the appearance of raw flesh against deep red and crimson backgrounds. Their faces are confused, and their bodies entangled in the surrounding chaos.

Hitler got his start because of the economic chaos in pre-World War II Germany and the need to blame someone for Germany’s national humiliation. The Jews became the major scapegoat of the masses and elites — and ultimate object of genocide.

“The Seeing Red metaphor expresses my anger at our current self-inflicted financial meltdown and anxiety for the future. So much violence is rooted in economic chaos and perceptions of injustice.”

Bound and boxed by Scott Mullenberg. Slip covered: 4.5" x 6" x 8". Six mixed media diptychs, 10" x 7".

These kvitls are contemporary interpretations of traditional Jewish folded prayer messages.

In the little villages of Eastern Europe, pious Jews petitioned the spirits of great rabbis and sages to intervene with the deity on their behalf with these handwritten scraps of paper. They were put on tombstones or brought to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to be placed between the ancient stones.

“My kvitls ask nothing of God. They were written and painted in response to the vanished souls of every massacred Jewish community during the Holocaust.

“They could also be for the innocent massacred civilians of Rwanda, Darfur, or Bosnia. The metaphorical ghosts of any manmade catastrophe must be exhumed from historical amnesia and made into living memory. We must be alert to what is happening in the world.”

Bound and boxed by Scott Mullenberg. Approximately 8.5" x 5".

The cultural history of the Jews of Europe is largely defined by the ghetto.

The only real sunlight in their lives was the cherished writing about the Hebraic prophets, which the Jews passed from generation to generation. Life behind walls produced many of the characteristics of contemporary Jewish life. This includes a deep sense of a community at risk, and an admiration for intellectual prowess.

Although the words and pictures on the panels allude to the doomed Polish Jews of the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos, there is also an unexpected message in the artifact itself.

“My ghetto walls can be held in the palm of the hand and unfolded into different configurations at will. This sense of personal possibility is the hallmark of a free society like America.”

Bound and boxed by Scott Mullenberg. Seventeen individual 5" x 7" panels bound into various configurations.

The 20th century and first decade of the new millennium have had well over 120 million victims of state-sponsored violence. This includes world wars, civil wars, massacres, genocides, programs of “ethnic cleansing”, and death squads. Some scholars put the estimate much higher.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks sent shock waves through the United States. We’re not as invincible as we thought. Many Americans felt violated and vulnerable—something Jews have felt for millenniums. “I did 56 collages in about two weeks. I was thinking about the Holocaust and the Iraq war. It was a visceral reaction to the continuing violence of our times.”

8" x 10" leather-bound sketchbook, with removable metal screws, and watercolor paper.

Torn Asunder Digital Dialogues; Torn Asunder Video

The Orthodox Jews of Central and Eastern Europe called their little towns and villages shtetls. For centuries, these people lived in cultural isolation and abject poverty. They had to fend off attacks from the surrounding antisemitic society.

The Holocaust destroyed all the shtetls. The Jews were either murdered outright or deported to death camps. The few survivors of these tightly knit communities fled to the four corners of the earth.

“This series of prints recalls my vanished relatives. Ghosts cannot talk, but they can sometimes haunt the mind and paintbrush of an artist.”

Prints are housed in an art box created by Scott Mullenberg. Box with eight 7" x 5" giclée prints.

http://www.artnothate.com/video/spirit-shetl.php

Lamentations are profound expressions of grief. This artifact shows the healing process of making art. Deep sorrow can be exorcised from the mind and put on paper, making emotional pain meaningful and manageable.

“The thread that runs through much of my artwork is the attempt to transform an ugly experience into something beautiful ––although it can be a harsh and painful beauty.”

Bound by Scott Mullenberg. Slipcase with hardcover. Twenty-four 12" x 18" mixed media drawings on rice paper.

Like all human emotions, anger has a physical foundation. It is not just a psychological state of being.

When there is active or passive conflict, we are mad at someone or something. Anger is felt in the head, heart, and raised fist. Aggression and anger go hand in hand.

These collages were created around the classic 16th century anatomical prints published by Andreas Vesalius.. Vesalius was the first European to scientifically dissect and describe the human body as it actually exists.

“The images are both beautiful and brutal. They say much about our situation at the beginning of the 21st century.”

Split case and box by Scott Mullenberg. Eleven 8 ½" x 14" collaged images with museum corners on handmade, marbleized paper.

Although the Germans manufactured color film during WWII, it was only used for the documentation of combat and political propaganda.

But about 20 years ago, some slides mysteriously surfaced that documented Jewish children, women, and men from the Lodz ghetto in Poland just before their transport to a Nazi death camp.

“The photos were astounding in their banality. It was a cloudless day. The sun was shining and the trees were fully leaved. Flowers were in bloom. Even the Jews looked unremarkable — just civilian prisoners in a war zone. But it was the blue sky that seemed to dominate the images.

“In the human mind, patches of blue are forever associated with optimistic visions of the future. But nature is indifferent to the fate of human beings. Life goes on with or without us.”

Mixed media triptych, approximately 46" x 20".

Red is most often associated with danger, anger, blood, and war. It is perhaps the most emotional and distressing of colors.

Bodies burn. Human beings become smoke and ash.

Unlike most of the art in this exhibition, this piece has a vertical orientation rather than a horizontal one. It is tall and narrow; the eye begins at the top painting and moves down towards the bottom panel.

“It is about the descent of man.”

Mixed media triptych, approximately 40" x 12".

In the Jewish tradition, King Solomon is associated with the words: This too shall pass.

Even the worst genocides leave some survivors. When the killing ends, they walk around in shock and stupor—alone and lost in their own private torment.

“Of all the post-Holocaust images that I have painted, these figures remain foremost in my mind. There are survivors wandering against a burnt landscape. Just a few white lines delineate the shell of the human form.”

Mixed media, approximately 30" x 22".

This artwork responds to the existential dilemma of all survivors of genocide. The figures are against a sea of blue. There is no indication of historical time, place, or race. Everything is out of context.

Most survivors of contemporary genocides are invisible to both the general public and media. They bear witness to stories few want to hear.

“These are displaced people, abandoned by the world and without personal identities.”

Mixed media, approximately 18" x 24".

Fanatics of all political and religious denominations see the world in black and white. They think nothing of spilling the warm, red blood of living human beings. Outsiders are wiped out in the name of national purity.

Like the Nazis, most of the people who perpetrated the genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia, considered themselves patriots on an important mission.

“This image is about today’s killing fields—ground that should grow crops, not decompose innocent bodies.”

Mixed media, 18" x 24".

Most of the death and destruction of modern warfare comes from above—missiles, bombs, helicopter machine guns, and unmanned drones.

The three human forms in this composition are raising their arms to the sky. Are they being taken prisoner? Shielding their eyes from a fiery explosion? Or just looking up at the sky and praying that God can see and protect them from their fellow man?

Steel is a hard and pitiless metal; the most basic component of ballistic weapons. It is a metaphor for human ingenuity and inhumanity.

“None of the figures have faces or clothes. They are just exposed flesh. That is the picture of much of armed conflict in a technological world. That is a central metaphor of armed conflict in a technological world.”

Mixed media, 18" x 24".

All forms of prejudice are failures of imagination. To assume that all members of a particular group act the same way and share the exact same characteristics and values is as unimaginative as it is inaccurate.

This kind of mindless stereotyping is central to genocide throughout history. It allows us to hate or revile people we don’t truly know.

“Humans are sensate and aggressive creatures who crave the warmth and security of their own clan, and fear those who dwell apart from themselves. We will not hesitate to violently attack those whom we perceive as strangers.

“Friends and Stranger is the iconic image. We love who’s on the inside with us, and we hate who’s outside.”

Giclée print, 17" x 23".

Everything about the Final Solution was designed to maximize bureaucratic efficiency. Nothing was left to chance.

Within such a system, virtually no Jew could escape alive.

“I have talked to over fifty Holocaust survivors. I asked each of them, ‘How did you survive, when almost everyone around you perished?’

“Their answers were always the same: ‘Luck.’”

Survival was a game of chance.

Giclée print, 17" x 23".

This print juxtaposes an abstract image of a survivor against the dead. Splashes of bright color and strong, black lines are next to faint, grey markings.

Just as the blurred figures in this image seem to move, as if alive, the survivors of the Holocaust must live with the memory of loved ones lost.

“The original drawing just drew itself. Ink and pastel can render sensations that words just obscure.”

Giclée print, 17" x 23".

Like the figures in this print, the victims of the Holocaust were blown away by the violent winds of history. Hitler presumed that the world would not remember the millions of Jews swept into oblivion during his reign of global terror.

Had the Third Reich won World War II, the Nazis and their willing executioners would have probably succeeded in murdering all the world’s Jews. The bureaucratic and operational mechanisms were in place to eliminate virtually all traces of this ancient people and civilization.

“It is our capacity to remember and lament our inhumanity that restores our sense of shared humanity.”

Giclée print, 17" x 23".

Five figures are backed up against a wall. They are a metaphor for the human predicament: we are stuck on an increasingly crowded planet and have nowhere to go.

This print graphically addresses two primal fears. You are up against a wall that stops your progress through life; or, you are about to be shot.

“In a Post 9/11 world, many of us can imagine ourselves in this picture.”

Giclée print, 17" x 23".

This print is about hope in a violent world.

A bird in flight can be the symbol of the human spirit in both Western and Eastern art. The black wing speaks to the darkness in the human heart, and the blue and green wing to our capacity for growth and transcendence.

“Not surprisingly, this image is a favorite among many viewers. We must have faith in our innate capacity to soar above our sorrows and seek a better future.”

Giclée print, 17" x 23".

The most essential elements of Jewish law and learning are recorded in the Torah scrolls. These are popularly known as the Five Books of Moses or the Old Testament.

“My Shoah Scroll is a wordless response to the Holocaust. The images progress from an opaque darkness to a more luminous color palette. Each generation will see the despair and the hope in the scroll differently, but must respond to the inevitable tragedies of their times in their own ways.”

Painted linen box with fasteners by Scott Mullenberg. Sumi-e paper scroll, 10' x 18".