“Michael Maul & Tim Maul" brings together works on paper by Michael Maul and photographs by Tim Maul, marking the first time the brothers have exhibited together. Michael's drawings were made at home on legal pads and notebooks, using basic materials he sourced himself. He was devoted to producing repetitive, sequential renderings of characters drawn from television, books and music. These works are paired with Tim's understated, compelling large-scale Cibachrome prints, from a series of photographs taken in the 1990's of book covers. Together, the two bodies of work engage repetition as both method and subject. In their juxtaposition, unexpected visual harmonies emerge, like the blue corner of a book that echoes the drape of a coat in one of Michael's drawings. The appreciation of repeated forms and their rhythms spans across both practices. Such correspondences suggest an underlying shared visual language—an affinity that feels not coincidental but fraternal.

Organized with Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects

Michael Maul (b. Stamford Ct.1953 - d. 2020)  Beginning in childhood Michael drew complex, sequential images originating from numerous sources including comic books and advertising/archival media culling language and recurring characters from almanacs,TV Guides, and 60's television programs. In the early 1970's he began a long association with ARI, a Stamford organization that remains committed to the placement of the intellectually disabled in the workforce with the eventual goal of independent living. 

Tim Maul  (b. Stamford Ct. 1951) Tim Maul is an artist and art writer based in New York and Connecticut. He studied painting at the The School of Visual Arts (1969-73) and works in photography, media, performance and has published criticism and essays in Art in America, Flash Art, Afterimage and OSMOS. Institutional collections include The Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC and Centre Pompidou Paris. Recent projects include ‘Tim Maul Super 8 Films,1973-1977' at the Emily Harvey Foundation NYC and ‘Landscape Reborn, Inaugural Exhibition' Frac-Artotheque Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Limoges France.

See more anyway

“See more anyway” is the request my brother would read off the screen during our weekly afternoons spent online looking at images, old commercials, and cartoons on Youtube. Michael Maul (1953-2020) was a baffling erratically behaved child who required continuous attention from his working-class parents and from me. He embodied every trope of what we know now as autism-non verbal for years, fixating on anything that circled and later savant-like recall on specific subjects, mainly pop music charts and the ‘Batman' TV show, “He drew before he could talk” is another applicable cliche. Although legally blind he drew, if allowed, on any flat material an inexplicable series of subjects- the ruffles that decorated circus tents, water towers and electronic devices in sophisticated detail.

I first heard the word ‘autism' applied to his condition in the late 60's and my ears pricked up in Kynaston McShine's 1973 criticism class at the School of Visual Arts when it was used in relation to the ‘aura' around Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. That following week I brought to class several xeroxes I made of Michael's drawings and I recall Kynaston scrutinizing the comic book influenced renderings intently. We formed a friendship where I ran errands and looked after his loft for a few years. I soon recognized the ‘aura' of post-minimal autism around the collaborations of Robert Wilson/Christopher Knowles, in the seriality of Hanne Darboven's ‘handwriting', the Becher's photographs (possibly) and in the extended performances of Charlemagne Palestine along with my own sequential photographs and films. 

Shortly before Michael died of a COVID-related illness I showed him a catalogue of the Becher's water tower's which he pronounced “Neat!”-high praise indeed. Michael lived alone (with the assistance of aides) and I believe that his daily drawing routine provided both necessary solace and respite from a version of the world that I cannot pretend to imagine.

Tim Maul 02/26