Guilty Pleasures | Jay Muhlin

Guilty Pleasures book title text treatment - Logo

Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures is a photographic project, photobook, tarot deck, and installation by Jay Muhlin exploring winter, comfort, domestic space, friendship, solitude, and emotional life.

Photographed in Syracuse, New York during a nearly record-breaking winter, the project turns inward toward the rituals, humor, objects, animals, and relationships that help people find warmth during periods of isolation.

The installation includes a woven photo blanket, tarot deck, newsprint poster and interview, photobook, inkjet prints, and twenty digital notebooks navigated with a custom keyboard.

See Greeting Cards Sets
Smoke & car door from Guilty Pleasures, Syracuse NY
A white cat yawning with its mouth wide open against a black background. The text says 'Guilty Pleasures' and 'Jay Muhlin'.
A PowerPoint slide titled 'Sample PowerPoint Slide' with a blue header and grey background. Contains bullet points about the physical structure of a building, including 'Shape: rectangular', 'System: concrete beams', and 'Exterior: glass windows'.
Person wearing a striped shirt shows the hand, wearing a white glove, planting a small green leafy plant on a black surface next to a window.
Car covered in snow, partially buried in snowdrifts.

Components

First Part of the Trilogy

A black book titled 'Guilty Pleasures' by Jay Muhlin, standing upright on a white background.

Guilty Pleasures

Photobook first edition - 84 pages - offset press edition of 100

A collection of playing cards with diverse images and titles, including a pizza, a person in the snow, people on a bed, a performer, and a woman standing outdoors.

Guilty Pleasures / Tarot Deck

offset press edition of 100

A black and white rabbit sitting on a teal fabric surface with a teal background, with text indicating the cover of a music album.

The Couch Sonata

Newspaper Poster 2012

Guilty Pleasures considers the human need for comfort, happiness, and private consolation. Here, “guilty” is not a moral judgment, but a way of naming the small rituals and comforts we turn toward when the outside world feels unwelcoming.

Photographed in Syracuse, New York during a nearly record-breaking winter, the project turns inward to friends, homes, objects, animals, and domestic routines. As snow accumulates outside, the interior becomes both refuge and pressure chamber — a hermetic world that functions as self-portrait, social document, and record of winter.

A bookshelf filled with various books, a small artistic globe, a colorful puppet dressed in a white shirt and plaid skirt, and a few small objects including a gray robot toy and a photograph.

Exhibitions & Presentations

Guilty Pleasures launched as a photobook and solo exhibition at Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia in 2015. The project was also presented at the SPE Conference in Pittsburgh, Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, Spark Contemporary Art Space in Syracuse, and through artist talks at Bennington College, Tyler School of Art, and La Salle University.

An expanded solo exhibition was later presented at Duplex Gallery in Portland, Oregon, accompanied by tarot readings using the Guilty Pleasures deck.

Gallery wall displaying several framed photographs of various subjects, including food, a wedding ring, a bed, a house, and a person with painted nails, arranged on a white wall.
Text that reads 'Guilty Pleasures' in stylized bold font.

Vox Populi Gallery , Philadelphia, PA

https://voxpopuligallery.org/exhibitions/jay-muhlin-guilty-pleasures/

Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures is a photographic project, photobook, tarot deck, and installation by Jay Muhlin exploring winter, comfort, domestic space, friendship, solitude, and emotional life.

Photographed in Syracuse, New York during a nearly record-breaking winter, the project turns inward toward the private rituals, humor, objects, animals, and relationships that help people find warmth and connection during long periods of confinement. The work reflects on introspection, care, and the strange emotional weather of being inside while the outside world becomes increasingly difficult to enter.

Presented as an exhibition, Guilty Pleasures brings these ideas into physical and interactive form through a woven photo blanket, tarot deck, newsprint poster and interview, photobook, inkjet prints, and twenty digital notebooks navigated with a custom keyboard.

Close-up of a person's ear with dark, shiny hair and a black and red clothing collar with small metallic studs.
Painting of a sailing ship navigating rough seas, mounted on a wall with visible pipes and electrical outlets.

Press

Aint-bad

https://www.aint-bad.com/article/2015/07/20/jay-muhlin/

http://www.title-magazine.com/2015/09/interview-jay-muhlin/

Title Magazine

White cat lying on crumpled white bedsheet, looking directly at the camera.
A young woman with long strawberry blonde hair, wearing a blue and white checkered shirt, stands in front of a waterfall mural. Her eyes are closed, and her hair is blowing across her face.
A white refrigerator door with two shelves holding a total of fifteen eggs, some with red stamps, arranged in a single row on each shelf.
Young alligator with a harness lying on a blue and white pool float.
Snowy car covered in a thick layer of snow during a snowstorm at night.
A white cat yawning with its mouth open, showing teeth and tongue, on a black background.
Black and white rabbit sitting on a wooden chair with white spindles against a textured white wall.
A person pointing to a starry sky pattern on a black poster wall, with their hand and part of their arm visible, wearing a black and white checkered shirt sleeve and several bracelets.
Snow falling heavily at night outside a house with a brick wall and a large window, with a snow-covered car parked on the street.
An eye peeking through a hole in a cardboard box.
A woman with dark hair and makeup looking through a snow-covered window or glass with snowflakes and water droplets on the surface.
Two people holding a handful of ice cubes over a table at a restaurant, with glasses of ice and salt shakers on the table.
Person with a plaid shirt is playfully grabbing a calico cat by the neck near a window, outside view shows snowy city scene with cars and buildings.
Bed with a blue blanket featuring a print of a woman and a dog, two white pillows, and a white knit throw blanket.

  • In 2015 in was published in collaboration with a successful Kickstarter campaign.

  • What are the rulses of the projects?

    Did it really snow that much?

A bed with a blanket featuring a large graphic print of a white horse with an open mouth, showing teeth and tongue, against a blue background.

Next Exhibit & Book Publication in the Trilogy …

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