Talia Glazer's Final Review: Matt Mullican's The Universe

            From February 28 through April 11 2026 Peter Freeman, Inc housed an exhibition titled The Universe, a solo show of Matt Mullican’s single artwork of the same title. The piece, produced between 2023-2025 is a series of every image from the 1990 edition of the Random House Encyclopedia. The artist cut out every single image and chapter title and collaged them onto sheets of paper numbered in black marker with a line through the middle. When laid together the lines draw a sequential path from one sheet to the next. The piece comprises 9, 519 collaged sheets.     

            Upon first entering the gallery the viewer sees the two encyclopedias from which the images were taken. One is opened to a section titled “The Universe” and the subsequent several hundred pages are missing. In their place is straggled paper hugging the spine of the book, spindling off in shredded pieces. This is where the artist’s blade extracted each image. The book foreshadows what is to come in the exhibition, careful order marked with an edge of ruin. A table shows stacks of thousands of sheets of paper included in the series and manilla envelopes. This is a small bit of the assemblage, a preview comfortably displayed as a familiar stack of papers. 

Then, after crossing the threshold of the partial wall in the gallery’s entry way, the viewer is confronted with an expansive, high ceiling room covered in images. The sheets of paper line every inch of the walls, are displayed across a platform in the center of the room, half walls, bulletin boards, only broken by windows and columns permanent to the space’s architecture. The sheer volume immediately imparts a feeling of megalophobia. The viewer is made to feel small in comparison to the grand, all encompassing nature of the immersive piece. Mullican has essentially made tangible the feeling of how insignificant one is in the scheme of the entire universe by overloading the viewer with visual information. One is overwhelmed by the scene, but eventually the eyes focus on a piece of the assemblage, and the order begins to become more clear. Thematically linked images are ordered together, and upon following the lines the viewer rests on a title introducing the next series of images. The numbers on the tops and bottoms of each page are in sequence, letting one know where in the grand scheme of The Universe they are looking. It would be impossible to see the entire thing as many pictures are high above the sightline. 

Each image is closely cropped so the image stands apart from context backed only by white, creating a strong sense of uniformity in isolation. Topics from art to science to politics are organized but entirely cluttered together in covering every inch of space. One is not imparted with actual encyclopedic knowledge as much as with a staggering feeling that there is an oversaturation of information. The entire piece functions as a systematic, highly ordered act of chaos and destruction.