Fischer Mustin’s figures capture the trepidatious line between absurdity and perversion that distils contemporary Western life. Mustin’s languid solitary figures are suspended in an atmosphere that is perverse as it is pensive, with a game of signs taking place across the surface which serve to do and undo meanings, creating a polarisation of painting’s conventions and signals.
Throughout Mustin’s work there is a dislocated approach to mark-making that weaves a thread between various moments in art history, borrowing from across different centuries. The effect across the canvas is one of discourse, alluding to a tension through the history of painting as a medium that captures and reflects.
There is an ambiguity as to the intention behind the figures Mustin depicts in the works, conjuring a quiet sense of unease as well as alluding to the metaphysical presence of the artist as actor and conspirator. They offer an insight into a desperate dejected world of warped relationships between objects, subjects and their image. Mustin is a recent graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, London (UK), in 2024. He was the recipient of the Freelands Foundation Painting Prize (2020) and the Edna Rose Weiss Award (2023). Mustin was recently included in the group exhibition The Garden of Earthly Delights at GRIMM, New York, NY (US) and will present a solo exhibition there, opening on November 7 – December 20, 2025.
Selected exhibitions include: A Room Hung with Thoughts: British Painting Now, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US), 2025; RA Schools Show 2024, Royal Academy Schools Studios and Weston Studio, London (UK); Three Years, Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK), in 2024; The Belly and The Guts, Alice Amati, London (UK); Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK), in 2023; and Upside Down Bucket, PS MIRABEL, Manchester (UK), in 2020.

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