We are very happy to feature a zine style cut-up story by the artist and writer Elberto Muller (@vibedoubt ) in our forthcoming Spring/Summer 2026 issue.
In “Mister Clear Pain,” a reclusive narrator is visited by a “second hand man” who gifts him a jar of a peculiar product: Clear Pain. This substance doesn’t offer a chemical high, but a sensory one, triggering audio playbacks of a familiar stranger’s rhapsodies of romantic distress whenever the jar is opened. Voyeurism blooms into addiction as the narrator shares the jar at parties, where his social circle bonds over the wallowing of a man they claim to despise. In a grim inverse ratio, the narrator’s own romantic woes begin to mount in direct proportion to the jar’s dwindling contents.
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Elberto Muller is an interdisciplinary artist who makes graffiti, mosaics, and sculpture that have been exhibited widely on boxcars and roadsides, and in galleries including Entrance (@entrance.nyc ), Jeffrey Deitch (@jeffreydeitchgallery ), Anton Kern (@antonkerngallery ), and Post Times (@post__times ). He is the author of many photocopied zines, poems, and the surrealist novels 𝙂𝙧𝙖𝙛𝙛𝙞𝙩𝙞 𝙊𝙣 𝙇𝙤𝙬 𝙤𝙧 𝙉𝙤 𝘿𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨 (2023), 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙖𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙚’𝙨 𝘿𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙢 (2015), and 2009: 𝘼𝙣 𝘼𝙪𝙩𝙤𝙥𝙨𝙮 (2011), as well as the collection 𝙁𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 (2014). Muller is an artist’s artist who sublimates American vernacular culture through prodigious memory and psycho-semantically altered clichés and aphorisms. His practice draws together an enthusiastic and motley audience—nephews, devotees of Bataille, and fans of the great American animation franchise 𝙈𝙚𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙙𝙞𝙚𝙨, among others.
Publication Day is May 1. 📗
Preorder through the link in bio and stay tuned for more previews.
#elbertomuller
#toughpoets
As it is the 10 year anniversary of our artistic partnership, @y0ucantwin and I are making a book of our graffitis- a lot of older stuff has slipped through the cracks - if you have any quality photos of either of our works - pieces monikers tags whatever - and feel like contributing please email to:
[email protected]
Elberto “SLUTO” Muller at Post Times, New York
“Intermodal 53”
January 14 – March 1, 2026
Photos: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Post Times, New York
@post__times@vibedoubt
Installation views and artwork images are now available on the website at . The exhibition is open Thursday - Sunday, 12-6pm, through March 1.
Intermodal 53 takes its title from the 53-foot shipping container that serves as the standard unit for domestic intermodal freight transport across North America. Designed to move seamlessly between trucks, trains, and ships without unloading cargo, the intermodal container is a symbol of circulation, mobility, and infrastructure. For the artist, it is also deeply personal: throughout years of train hopping across the United States, intermodal containers functioned both as a means of transportation and as a primary surface for his graffiti and mosaic work.
The title also operates as a metaphor for his fluid artistic practice, which moves freely between spray paint, mosaic tile, and the written word. Drawing from the visual culture and overlooked spaces of contemporary America, the works navigate themes of transience, loneliness, and survival, while maintaining a tone characterized by playful mischief and at times grim cynicism.
Elberto “SLUTO” Muller (born) has presented the solo exhibition Vacant Hand at Entrance, New York, and has been included in recent group exhibitions Carnival (Curated by Joe Coleman) at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, and Love Poems (Curated by Chris Martin) at Anton Kern, New York, among others. As a writer, he has published numerous zines and books, including Graffiti on Low or No Dollars: An Alternative Guide to Aesthetics and Grifting Throughout the United States and Canada. His graffiti and mosaic wall reliefs are currently on view at numerous sites in New York and across the United States.
@vibedoubt
Images by Francis Louvis
In spring I made this tape of layered videos and radio recordings. Someone let me borrow a GoPro so I made a video so I could upload the whole thing to youtube . Chopped up the tracklist to make a one page zine, a short story, side a side b. I don’t have a solution to the Spotify problem, one grotesque Swedish hobgoblin ceo amassing billions while artists get paid pennies, or less- you should be thankful to even have a platform where people can steal your tunes, they say. Music went unrecorded for 40,000 years, it has only been reproducible and commodifiable for ~120 - maybe soon we will go back. This is part of a larger project on the nature of ownership, guardianship, repurposing, or something like that- we’ll see what comes of it. Link in stories and bio
