Gumoils, 2025-2026

GUMOILS, 2025-2026

Each work begins with a photograph, but the photographic image is only the starting point. Through the Gumoil process, I expose, add and remove paints, and rework the image by hand, allowing the original photograph to become something less fixed and more physical. Oil pigment is introduced into the photographic surface, transforming the image while preserving traces of its photographic origin.

The resulting works are singular objects. No two are exactly alike, and the imperfections, variations, and unexpected marks inherent in the process become part of the work rather than flaws to be corrected. My goal is to embrace this unpredictability as a way of questioning photography’s traditional role as a medium of evidence and representation.

What happens when a photograph can no longer be understood simply as a record of what was in front of the camera? Gumoil Images become fragmented, obscured, revealed, and reimagined. Familiar subjects can move toward memory, suggestion, and ambiguity, occupying a space between what is remembered and what is invented.

For me, the physical transformation of the photograph is inseparable from its meaning. The labor of making becomes visible in the finished work, turning the photographic image into a tactile object that carries evidence not only of what was photographed, but of the act of making itself.

Gumoils ultimately ask us to reconsider what a photograph can be: not simply an image captured, reproduced, and viewed, but a unique physical object whose meaning continues to change through the process of its making.

Burg Reichenstein

$600.00

Gumoil on cotton rag paper.
Numbered & signed
#1 of 5 in a Variable edition.
18.5 × 16 in. (47 × 40.6 cm)

Burg Reichenstein is a one-of-a-kind Gumoil photographic work by Scott Mueller. The photographic image is transformed through the Gumoil process combining photographic emulsion and oil pigment to create a singular photographic object.