"Thinking Hand" at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, 10 November – 30 December 2022

"Der geschenkte Tag. Kastor & Polydeukes" at Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 14 October 2022 – 19 February 2023

The centrepiece of the exhibition is the eponymous, expansive painting “The Given Day” (2021–2022), which is made up of 24 large-format canvases and measures in total 6 x 65 meters. The piece is based on the Ancient Greek myth of the Dioscuri, the twins Castor and Polydeuces: the inseparable brothers are divided by the death of Castor, a mortal, in a fight. Devastated by sorrow, the immortal Polydeuces pleads with his father Zeus, saying he is willing to give up his own immortality to save his brother. Touched by this love, Zeus grants the two brothers a shared life – a life between the worlds. Henceforth the brothers alternate between a day spent in Hades, the realm of the dead, and a day on Olympus amongst the gods. In the prologue to the exhibition, drawings and a sculpture by Michael Müller introduce the myth – interacting with works from the Städel collection. The Hades (2022) work group, which will be on view in the Garden Halls, sees the artist quite literally taking visitors on a tour of the “underworld”.

By means of painting while also going beyond its boundaries, Müller thus presents a multi-faceted artistic reflection on the meaning of time, mortality, and love that endures outside time. In the process, he weighs up the potential of abstraction and asks the crucial question: Can an abstract artwork tell a story?

DREI BIOGRAPHISCHE VERSUCHE:
Kapitel 4 "Das gemachte Ich"
at Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, 17 February – 4 April 2022

In the final chapter Das gemachte Ich [en: Self-Creation], Müller exposes personal and intimate events of his life, to elaborate on the belief that “Life is Flux” (proposed by ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus), the theory of tabula rasa, and his motto of “Do It Yourself" – asserting the notion that human beings, each individual should take charge in constructing one’s self, one’s relationship with the other and the world – through his large-scale installations in a white cube with “a dangerous open bracket”.

Das gemachte Ich provides a survey of Müller’s oeuvre in every medium – drawings, paintings, sculptures, objects and performances, multiples and printed works, revealing the multifaceted creativity, formal inventiveness and wide conceptual range of the artist. Müller challenged the traditional confines of art to embrace a much broader, philosophical and humanistic practice. (Galerie du Monde, February 2022)

DREI BIOGRAPHISCHE VERSUCHE:
Kapitel 2 "Der Wolkenvermesser"
at Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, 17 November 2021 – 29 January 2022

“How do we make sense of the world?” This is the key question Müller addresses in the second chapter Der Wolkenvermesser [en: The Cloud Surveyor], through the diary of a traveler observing clouds. Delving into specific events and dreams from his journey in the Himalayas, Müller further elaborates on the concepts of feeling and accuracy, the self and the other, and shifting perspectives. (Galerie du Monde, November 2021)

DREI BIOGRAPHISCHE VERSUCHE:
Kapitel 1 "Gefüge – Gefühl und Genauigkeit"
at Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, 15 September – 6 November 2021

The exhibition series is like Müller’s personal diary from the past three decades. Through each chapter, Müller unveils his journey of self-discovery, embracing change, and self-creation.

"Schwierige Bilder" curated by Philipp Bollmann at Sammlung Wemhöner at Hasenheide 13 in Berlin, 30 April – 1 August 2021

"Ästhetisches Urteil und Selbstlosigkeit: sich einer Sache aussetzen mit entleertem Blick und ohne Halt" at Galerie Thomas Schulte Berlin, 17 October – 7 November 2020

After the first part of his solo presentation at Galerie Thomas Schulte this autumn, which opened as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin 2020, Michael Müller approaches his own work as curator in the second iteration of his exhibition. With the title Ästhetisches Urteil und Selbstlosigkeit: sich einer Sache aussetzen mit entleertem Blick und ohne Halt (Aesthetic Judgement and Selflessness: exposing oneself to something with an empty gaze and without holding back) the artist takes the theme of abstraction one step further. By staging a second version of the exhibition, the curator Michael Müller distances himself from Michael Müller as painter and, thus, also from his own self-commissioned works. Furthermore, a second exhibition opens up the possibility of self-correction; different versions and points of view create a situation of comparison. Herein aesthetic decisions can be found to be right or wrong and an aesthetic judgment can be made.

The most noticeable aspect to set the second hanging from the first is its reduced, concentrated form. Nearly all elements of installation have been removed from the exhibition and the paintings are each given their own space on the walls. The large abstract paintings, for example, Mentale Treibhölzer (Mental Driftwood) had originally been fitted into the window frames of the Corner Space to function as paintings for the urban space. Now presented in a classic hanging inside the gallery, they have been freed from their subjugation as parts of the site-specific installation, and—released from their synthesis with the architecture—have been strengthened in their autonomy.

Müller approaches the second major theme of the exhibition, selflessness, by installing a physical threshold in the exhibition space. Müller sees the crossing of a threshold as inherent in the creative act. Thus, Müller describes as part of the creative process the build-up of an inner pressure—nourished by aesthetic considerations of form and color as well as an emotional blending of fear and lust—that accumulates and finally finds its release on the canvas.

The first action—the first brushstroke—marks the crossing of a threshold and requires planning, determination, and sense of purpose. Thinking of the artist as the driving force and engine of the creative process, the painter soon, however, encounters a paradox when confronted with the question of when a painting is finished. The answer often only becomes evident in the transgression, when a further brushstroke becomes too much. Therefore, only the painting itself seems to be able to assert its own perfection.

The title of the large-format diptych in the Window Space, No. 3 & 4, The shoulder on which to bear time (2019/20), is indicative of Müller‘s understanding of the role of the artist in the painterly process. According to Müller, a picture goes through various life phases such as childhood, youth, and maturity. The painter is responsible for the temporal duration of these stages of a painting, but is relieved of this responsibility once the painting is complete. Although painting begins with the pictorial idea and inner desire of the artist, the picture is only finished once it has become alien to them; once it is no longer their picture, but has become the picture. This selflessness also gives the painting its potency for the future: since every future beholder will see the painting differently, subjectively, with different expectations and differing levels of prior knowledge, by being seen the picture will be produced anew, again and again.

"Anton im Bastrock" (Anton in a Bast Skirt) and "Bikini on Mars" at Galerie Thomas Schulte Berlin, 9 September – 9 October 2020

Galerie Thomas Schulte is pleased to present two new exhibitions by Michael Müller, Anton im Bastrock and Bikini on Mars, both opening as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin this September 2020. It will be the first solo show by the artist at the gallery since his extensive cycle of “18 Exhibitions” (2013 to 2017). The new exhibitions will furthermore be the first with a focus on Müller’s oeuvre of painted work. Until now, the artist has been known primarily for his conceptually complex, multilayered installations and performances, and as a curator. As part of his shows at the gallery, Müller will present a number of new series of programmatic painting: “Before and behind the glass,” “Handicap,” “Difficult Paintings,” “Abstract Autogamy” and “Power of Judgement.” Through these works, Müller examines painting’s classical approaches, methods and techniques, as well as its formats, materials, presentation and reception. In so doing, he questions our learned expectations of painting. The groups of works each explore different aspects of the painterly process.

The gallery’s main space features a number of different series of paintings. The center-piece of which is the painting-installation Power of Judgement. A single painting is presented in the center of the room, attached with a flexible joint to a free-standing metal pole. The visitor is invited to change and manipulate the orientation of the painting by moving it around. For this purpose, the frame of the painting has been equipped with handles. The viewer is thus enabled to break with otherwise deterministic and standardized formats of exhibiting and viewing painted works.

“Before and behind the glass” is the title of the first series of abstract paintings, presented by Müller in the main exhibition space. Using a range of materials, from glass, canvas and metal as surfaces to paint on, the artist explores possibilities of shaping the relationship between an image’s projected spatial effects and its nature as a painting and three-dimensional object. By painting on glass, which usually separates the painting from its surroundings, we as viewers see the paint from behind through the transparent surface. The composition of the final work, which in some cases consists of several layers of paint on transparent and non-transparent surfaces, requires Müller to paint in reverse: The mental blueprint of the work’s final composition is painted backwards to forwards. Moreover, the paint seen from behind the glass appears as a smooth, saturated surface. The brushstroke, the physical trace of the artist’s hand—traditionally central to the painterly process— remains hidden; concealed in the small space between the glass and the canvas or wall.

Müller used his fingers to create a further, smaller series of works, “Handicap”. He also used special tools, to make obstruct and impede the painting process, such as windshield wipers, a mop, a scalpel, rollers or an encrusted, dry brush. The artist thus deconstructs the myth of the artist’s ingenious hand—a myth dating back to the Neolithic period; to the imprint of the human hand found by archaeologists in early cave paintings.

The series “Difficult Paintings” is a group of diptychs, each consisting of a larger picture in landscape format and a smaller picture in portrait format. Both parts of the diptych are hung side by side, though at different angles. In this way, the relationship between the two parts becomes both complex and unequal. In all cases, the smaller picture comes second to the larger, original work, thus acting as a form of commentary within the broader composition. Each painting in the pair took varying time to complete and were painted using different methods. This marked temporal dimension plays a decisive role in further complicating the relationship between the larger and smaller parts. For, although the larger picture came first, the second picture reproduces an earlier state of the first that has been painted over in the final version. Thus, Müller uses the means of reproduction to document and visualize a decision made during the painting process.

The series, “Abstract Autogamy” combines photography and painting; blending together themes of figuration and abstraction. In this series, photographs are printed on aluminum dibond sheets and framed behind an abstract glass painting. Though both parts of the diptych are based on the same image, they appear in a mirrored, enlarged or otherwise abstracted form, thus making their relationship at once tangible yet complex. Aside from their shared color palette and image reference, the painting and photograph behind it are conceived of as compositionally independent. The term autogamy, in the series’ title, is borrowed from the field of biology, where it describes the phenomenon of self-pollination or self-fertilization among certain plant and animal species. Müller’s “autogamies” show men and women masturbating. Müller sees the eradication of the dialectical separation between subject and object in auto-sexuality as analogous to abstraction—to painting an object that only refers to itself. Like in auto-sexuality a partner or object is often imagined—projected—from memory, thus begging the question: What is the pictorial memory of abstraction?

After the first display presented during Gallery Weekend Berlin, a second iteration of the exhibition will be installed halfway through its runtime under the title Aesthetic Judgment and Selflessness. In this second display, all elements of installation will be removed from the exhibition space and the paintings will be presented in a classically reduced and concentrated form.

DEINE KUNST (2) "The Art(ist) is Present / Der Tod des Autors wird nicht zugelassen" at Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, 19 May - 6 October 2019

The ‘Städtische Gallery Wolfsburg’ opened on October 20 / 1974. On the occasion of its 45. anniversary, Berlin-based artist Michael Müller was invited to curate a new experimental presentation of the Institution’s Collection. The Artist gives us an exhibition cycle that spans two years and introduces The Collection in several consecutive iterations. From October 19 / 2019 to February 23 /2020, ‘Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg’ is showing the third version of this unusual exhibition cycle - ‘Deine Kunst’. Titled as ‘The Conditions of Being Art’, it takes a selection of works from the in-house Collection as the pretext to experiment with the conditions and possibilities of composing an exhibition, isolating, investigating and inflecting its individual parameters.

How are artworks presented? How do both the room and their surrounding environment influence them? Is there a "law of good vicinity" (Warburg) or are all works "the mortal enemy" of others close by (Adorno)? ‘The Conditions of Being Art’ - like this whole exhibition cycle - poses these questions through intricate, intriguing connections between artworks, investigating the relationship between Artwork and Artist, Artist and Curator, Curator and Audience, which meet through a variety of forms within the exhibition space. The Artists use, inter alia, the signature and the self-portraiture as tools of authentication, which could hardly be more different or varying. This focus on rarely noticed forms of delimitation: the frame that surrounds the works and limits authorship. Where does the artwork end? Where does the frame begin? What happens if the frame becomes an artwork? The greater significance of neighborhood and proximity in the effect of each individual piece (their co-existence, side by side or against one another, in the wall or in the room), - is the last major focus of this exhibition, investigating how artworks can influence and even dilute one another.

Each of the works now in the show was presented in the previous exhibition of this cycle through an audio guide – only heard and never seen. They are (even as so much is given away) not to be curated free from disruptions. It is these disruptions that will shine a light on what else is at work. The exception reveals the rule.

"The Pregnant Man" at Studio Michael Müller, Berlin, 24 - 28 April 2019

Shortlisted for "Kunstpreis der Böttcherstrasse" at Kunsthalle Bremen, 28 July – 30 September 2018: Michael Müller "Stripping the Force"

“Stripping the Force” consists of two parts, separated from each other by a wall. Formally, these parts are quite distinct from each other, but in terms of their themes and motives they are closely connected. The frontal part of the exhibition is set in a simple, ethnographic style and deals with an ancient, presumably extinct civilisation: the “Himmelheber” (“Sky-Bearers”). As Müller explains in conversation, the Himmelheber have already been extinct and revived a number of times. Among their characteristics are a voluntary death by choice (always in autumn and at a river, always chaperoned by a companion, Tarung) and a hermaphrodite priesthood that is meant to connect to the Dram, the “In-Between”, where the Gods and ancestors are located, a realm between life and death.

The people of the Himmelheber have bequeathed objects of peculiar beauty, some of which are shown in the frontal part of the exhibition – accompanied by a wall text and an audio guide. The objects are fully coated with a coarse, dark paste that consists of blood, bone meal, hair, urine and sperm (materials that are derived – and secreted – from the vulnerable, “open” body). Presumably, the paste had a ritual function and was (or still is) used by priests during religious acts. Aside from these relics, the first part is dedicated to some exemplary rites of the Himmelheber, which the audio guide (also a work of Müller’s) explains. How and when do we die? How will we be remembered? Who will accompany us through the act of dying? Which shape does our life take? The Himmelheber offer extraordinary answers to some questions that human beings have been dealing with for millennia.

The second part of the exhibition, in the rear end of the space, is a kind of “remix” of the first part and contains an exuberant contemporary flood of images. Several display stands, costumes and other items of clothing are on view in front of a purple-coloured wallpaper – mixed in with films, drawings, texts, prints, collages and objects. On several screens one can see the rehearsal for the two-and-a-half-hour long performance “Praxis, Probe und Produktion von Wirkungen und Wirklichkeiten” (“Praxis, Rehearsal, and Production of Effects and Realities”) that takes place within the space on the evening of the opening, employing some of the works of the exhibition in a performative way (a remote-controlled animal, a relic of the Himmelheber, among other things). The exhibition presents a diversity and pushes this diversity to the extreme, it quotes from clichés and develops – in an eccentric, hybrid fashion – mutations and metastases. The “topic” of the exhibition (the people of the Himmelheber) is varied, fractured and fanned out – like a ray of light that is broken into a kaleidoscopic range of colours in a rainy sky. The possible and the real are progressively rendered indistinguishable. What is one’s own converges with the foreign other. And the longing for distant places is turned back onto itself. The works might appear to be ironic, associative and strangely uninhibited. But ultimately, it turns out, they are one thing above all: deeply human.

"An Exhibition as a Copy" at Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, 8 March – 21 April 2018

Entitled An Exhibition as a Copy, Michael Müller’s exhibition consists of four pairs or groups of similar exhibits that investigates the duality of the original and the copy. The juxtaposition of the peculiarities of the artworks’ surfaces underscores the form as well as instigates a dialogue with each other; it also allows for deviations to stand out. The relationship between model and reproduction, original and copy thus becomes increasingly unclear.

The meticulous pairings of works will focus on the relationship between the original and the copy in an exemplary way: two almost identical, monumental though intricate drawings depicting a stain on Michael Müller’s studio floor (Differenz, Atlas and Differenz, Antiatlas), irreproducible in detail; a small, pastose relief and its adjacent 3-D printed copy (Das Bild als Objekt); and a figurine of a wolf-like monster including a 3-D printed duplicate (Keramisches Frühwerk (Monster) and Rekonstruktion (Keramisches Frühwerk)). For this occasion, the gallery will specially transform its space to replicate the exhibition setting where Müller’s works typically incorporate elements of surface and ground. For instance, Do it! (Setting Up History) #7 and #8 consist of monochrome, pastose paintings that are painted in the shade of the gray wall on which they are presented.

The Himmelheber (sky-bearer from the mythical tradition of the Titan Atlas) is a new series that Michael Müller has been working on since 2017, in which he also strives to unveil more extensive details of this new form of life in the coming years. According to Müller, the Himmelheber have died out and been reborn innumerable times. Consequently, many of their artefacts are preserved in multiple versions, copies and adaptations. The little information Müller provides on the Himmelheber compels the visitors to their ‘free’ interpretation.

Covered in a dark, coarse paste, the five groups of Himmelheber exhibits displayed in the show are: Hoover Generation Future Smart Pure White & Luxor Black / Smokey Grey Transparent, Stripping the Force (Chapter 1. Mourn), Stripping the Force (Chapter 2. Lonely Rest), Feldforschung (New African Kono) and Kopfgeburt. The paste consists of blood, urine, bone meal, hair, and sperm among other things – materials that derive from the vulnerable, ‘open’ body. A neon-lit, duo part acrylic glass cabinet displays quasi-ethnographic exhibits reminiscent of vacuum cleaners, standing one on top of the other. The objects are coated in their entirety, reduced in shape and contour, ultimately reaching a uniformed appearance. The paste marks them out as ‘chosen’ sacred artefacts.

Besides the vacuum cleaner forms in the two-part neon-lit acrylic glass vitrine, a series of small animal-like sculptures, Feldforschung (New African Kono), and two helmet-like sculptures are on display, Stripping the Force (Chapter 1. Mourn). The helmet-like sculptures are positioned in front of a photo wallpaper, which reduplicates the work, integrating it into a complex scenic context. The aforementioned groups of works exemplify the pictorial language of the Himmelheber and lend the other works in the exhibition an ethnographic impression.

"Teil 33. Nachlass zu Lebzeiten" & "Teil 18. Die Welt gibt es nicht" at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 29 April - 24 June 2017

Galerie Thomas Schulte presents from April 29 to June 24, 2017 two solo exhibitions Teil 18. Die Welt gibt es nicht! and Teil 33. Nachlass zu Lebzeiten by Michael Müller. The exhibitions constitute the finale of a four year cycle Eighteen Exhibitions, which started in April 2013 and which in the end will consist of overall 33 exhibitions and 4 performances.

In its recent iteration, the comprehensive solo exhibition Skits – 13 Exhibitions in 9 Rooms at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden from November 2016 to February 2017, the cycle was summarised and continued. Now Teil 18. Die Welt gibt es nicht! and Teil 33. Nachlass zu Lebzeiten with due expenditure bring the cycle to an end – an exceptional and exuberant (perhaps programmatically preliminary) oeuvre. The cycle follows a certain order and chronology, in which various themes are approached almost scientifically and translated artistically. With these final exhibitions, the artist‘s attention is directed to the significant qualities of his own work. Between the works presented, clusters are formed, which can be regarded as pillars of the artist’s work. Teil 33. Nachlass zu Lebzeiten is probably Michael Müller‘s most personal exhibition. During the final act, the artist reconsiders the essential questions in which the drawings, the idea of the window and the principle of the map play an important role. (...)

The exhibition title Teil 18. Die Welt gibt es nicht! is a variation of the title of a previous exhibition, namely Die Welt interessiert sich nicht für den Sinn, in which the central work was a series of small sculptures, which is being radically reinterpreted by Müller taking the form of soaps and perfumes. The second exhibition title Teil 33. Nachlass zu Lebzeiten is a reference to the title of a novel by Robert Musil whose Man Without Qualities stood at the beginning of Michael Müller’s cycle as a central point of reference. (Ulrich, the Man Without Qualities, decides to take one year leave from his life in order to find an occupation adequate for his skills.) The two current exhibitions bring together a multitude of heterogeneous works including Die Anderen, a series of formally diverse plaster sculptures resembling heads, and a series of drawings inspired by the act of reading Jacques Derrida’s Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question – and finally several works, which at the very end of the cycle reach back to the very beginning: to the artist’s earliest works.

"SKITS. 13 Exhibitions in 9 Rooms" at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 25 November 2016 - 19 February 2017

After the restoration of its roof, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden will reopen its upper floors by presenting »SKITS. 13 Exhibitions in 9 Rooms«, a solo exhibition of the Berlin-based artist Michael Müller, from 26 November 2016 to 19 February 2017.

Sixteen tons of fire-dried quartz sand, hundreds of metres of pond foil, several square metres of white and pink carpet, several tracks of translucent red plastic foil, an aquarium with two Mexican albino axolotls and 50 blind albino cave miners. In addition: 600 white tiles, numerous tons of different types of wood, 200 plates of damp clay, art works by Art & Language, Jan Brueghel the younger, Angela de la Cruz, Jochen Dehn, Rolf-Gunter Dienst, Willem de Kooning, Jonathan Lasker and Vlado Martek, in addition to Michael Müller's own drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations and videos: these are some of the materials and works of his exhibition.

The first part of the exhibition title - »Skits« - describes a short speech act that is used in hip-hop music. It is a deliberate interruption, often parodic, of the closed content form of a respective hip-hop album. The second part of the title - »13 Exhibitions in 9 Rooms« - is supposed to provide information on the subject matter of Müller which appears to be logical in view on the considerable material he has gathered for the exhibition. As varied as this inventory may seem, as varied are the motives Müller presents in the nine rooms of the Kunsthalle: literature, language, writing, music and dance, mythology and nature, religion and their rituals, gender identity or clothes up to the operating system of art are covering the range of his topics.

Within the meaning of this extraordinary use of effort and material, Müller's exhibition inventory has to be enriched with fifteen dancers, ten musicians and two DJs. They will perform the four-hour performance »Third Rehearsal for Nietzsche's birthday party, 2313« with drums, violins, a cello, a piano and clarinets during the opening night. The exhibition is organised by Hendrik Bündge, curator of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden.

"For All Those Who Trust in Form and Not in Content" at Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, 3 - 28 January, 2017

Jhaveri Contemporary is delighted to present ‘For All Those Who Trust in Form and Not in Content’, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Michael Müller, his second at the gallery. Müller has received significant attention recently with his unorthodox exhibition cycle, ‘18 Exhibitions,’ which began at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, in 2013. (So far, the cycle has consisted of 20 exhibitions and performances that revolve around Robert Musil’s novel, The Man Without Qualities, among other influences.)
Michael Müller’s works neither lend themselves to a common conceptual denominator nor order themselves into an easily identifiable formal language. Instead, exhibitions are marked by variety, heterogeneity, and ambiguity. ‘Languages’ of art are presented side-by-side and with equal emphasis: the result of a process of testing, combining, and varying. An example of Müller’s preoccupation with questions of authorship is the title of his exhibition, ‘Wer Spricht?’ (‘Who is Speaking?’), the artist’s first institutional solo at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2015/16).
Three bodies of work in ‘For All Those Who Trust in Form and Not in Content’ testify to the plurality and heterogeneity of Müller’s practice: the formally reduced and conceptually driven etchings, Verschwinden; the more ‘decorative’ installations of the Do It! series; and, lastly, expressive, figurative paintings like Small Indian Girl.

Verschwinden (to vanish)
The suite of 11 aquatint etchings on Japanese paper, printed with a light-sensitive pigment developed particularly for this work. Over the course of time, the tone of these sleek and highquality pink prints, ordered from light to dark flats and dark to light borders, will fade away. The etchings engage not only materially (through the fading of the pigment), but also formally (through the gradation of the pinks) with tone and intensity. In a metaphorical turn, they speak to the ‘vanitas’ theme of classical art history, relinquising claims to an eternal, timeless validity.

Do It!
On two walls in the central gallery hang paintings from the series Do It!. Consisting of pastose structured, small-format acrylic monochromes, they are painted, per Müller’s instructions, in the colour of the walls on which they hang. In this case, they become purple and turquoise. In the next exhibition, they will be painted over with another colour. Wall and work are thus resynchronized with one another, ton-sur-ton. Also included in the exhibition are two new jigzaw puzzles. Working with readymade puzzles, Müller coats the surface of his framed puzzles with real gold leaf, concealing their original image. The new surfaces of False and Real and For All Those Who Trust in Form and Not in Content are now more valuable than the motifs in the original picture could ever be.

Small Indian Girl (The Copy of an Unknown Artist), pretending to be a female artist
The painting shows a childlike figure, rendered once again in pink. The figure struggles to cart the form of a breast over a mountain: an image of the feminine, somewhere between a backpack and handcart. Stylistically, the painting engages with the relationship between quotation, homage, and plagiarism (here referring to the tradition of Philip Guston and similar painters). The artist’s choice of motif – at once allegorical, political and quasi-feminist – draws attention to questions of cultural and gender identity, as also to the place of women in traditional male-dominated societies.

"WHO’S SPEAKING?" at KW Institute for Contemporary Art (KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e. V.), 29 November 2015 - 24 January 2016

In continually changing formations cutting across all artistic genres, Michael Müller examines processes of composition and translation in visual art. Proceeding from the drawing medium and its specific strategies for visual invention at the boundary between line and form, idea and depiction, Müller transfers this tension from surface into space – and puts it to work as an installation. WHO’S SPEAKING? brings together works from recent years with specifically-developed new productions, which use various ways for investigating the question of artistic authorship.

From Müller’s perspective, “who is speaking?” also means “what is being said?” and “why?” But also “who is listening?” The exhibited works return time and again to the issue of how an artist becomes visible in his work. Each single piece stands at a pressure point between the application or transformation of historical and contemporary artistic codes, and the artist’s personal obsessions.

For WHO’S SPEAKING? Müller has conceived new versions of two figures – Hermes and Hermaphroditos – who weave a web of references and connections between the individual works, and accompany the viewer throughout the exhibition. As the voice in a new sound installation, the protagonist of a video, or as a figurative sculpture that reverses the relationship between work and viewer, these two figures from Greek mythology appear in both expected and unexpected places, and link the content of the exhibition’s two floors formally.

"Berührung", 4 July - 12 September 2015, "Die Welt interessiert sich nicht für den Sinn", 4 July - 19 September 2015, "Nachspiel: Wesen und Inhalt einer großen Idee", 15 - 19 September 2015, at Galerie Thomas Schulte

Michael Müller’s exhibitions “Berührung” in the main space of the gallery and “Die Welt interessiert sich nicht für den Sinn” in the Window Space are the continuation of his 18-part exhibition cycle, which he began in 2013 at Galerie Thomas Schulte.

Anew, the artist creates a multimedia cosmos on the basis of a dense system of references. As the title of one of the exhibitions reveals, it is about “Berührung” (contacts). The panorama of objects, pictures, and installations encompasses not only material and immaterial shapes or real and unreal, but also the profane, as well as the sacred ideas of making contact. The relationship between Lou Salomé, Nietzsche, and Paul Rée (in all constellations) is addressed as a contact as is Descartes’ theorem, which allows three kissing or mutually tangent circles to construct a fourth tangent circle.

The, perhaps, most simple form of contact, to literally touch, is embodied by the sand under the feet of the audience, which covers the entire surface of the exhibition space. Heating lamps warm the skin of the spectators and the ceramic objects distributed in the sand appear to be like shells on the beach, which are to be discovered and unearthed. Next to an explicit drawing of sexual penetration, plastic chairs are stacked into a tower.

Performing on or using the exhibited objects, Müller has 15 actors present musical and performative actions on the evening before the opening, entitled “Erste kleine Probe für Nietzsches Geburtstagsparty 2313”. Through the contact, the pieces are integrated into a context, which will remain even after the performance has taken place, and thus obtain a narrative charge. Contact so becomes equally a transformation, in which art objects turn to quasi objects of use and puts into question the hierarchy of things or even goes so far as to rearrange it.

The idea, which is played out in the rehearsal of the actors, to celebrate the 70th jubilee of the Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph with a Nietzsche-year, came from Clarisse, a character from Robert Musil’s novel, The Man Without Qualities, which continuously serves Michael Müller as a point of reference throughout his exhibition cycle. The celebration, which is rejected in the novel, due to its absurdity, is now displaced by Müller into the year 2313 and thus continues Musil’s “conscious utopianism”, which comes to effect in various forms throughout the novel.

It involves sensemaking through aestheticization to optimize the freedom to think up alternatives to religion and worship of the body. Contact points are not only included in every work, whether mathematically, spiritually or physically addressed, but linked equally throughout the exhibition and as part of the whole with the cycle.

"basal" at Aanant & Zoo, 21 February - 11 April 2015

Donald Bernshouse, Stuart Brisley, Julien Carreyn, Jochen Dehn, Merlin James, Philip Loersch, Vlado Martek, Michael Müller, Kasper Pincis, Gerhard Rühm, Max Schaffer

"Was nennt sich Kunst? Was heißt uns wahrsein?" at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 31 May − 26 July 2014

Parallel to the launch of the 8th Berlin Biennial, Galerie Thomas Schulte will host the opening of Michael Müller’s current solo exhibition “Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“ (What is considered art? What does it mean to be true to oneself?), the eleventh part of his exhibition cycle, which started last spring. With this show, Müller further attempts to discover that which we call art and what truth means to us. Little time is left until object, space, and color transform a twelfth time. The cycle ends with a grand finale – or, in other words, with the “Kleine Probe für Nietzsches Geburtstagsparty 2313” (Small Rehearsal for Nietzsche’s Birthday Party 2313) this fall.

There’s really nothing left to say. All possible approaches have been distributed. All the walls are endlessly occupied, all the surfaces are covered with wallpaper or carpeting, in pink. Pedestals are everywhere, covered with works, objects, and artifacts. Every corner of the exhibition space is layered with sound. An overflow of stimulation.

But if there’s nothing left to say, the question remains: what’s it all about? When everything has already been said, it could be said that nothing more actually is said. There’s only noise. Ultimately it’s about giving the open space of possibility a form to structure the noise so that some things then do remain to be said.

In the midst of the numerous opinions, assumptions, facts, and objects, is there actually “truthfulness”? Does there still exist, today as well, what we once with such endearing self-confidence called “truth”? What role does art play in this? Whatever calls itself art can only be deduced from itself (that presents “itself”). Whatever it has to say, we must translate. Since it is generally silent, we translate freely.

The reading, and the friendship, that always went deepest – to the heart of the matter – was yours.
Come closer. Take your time.
Take off your shoes.
Equal among equals.

"Eine Ausstellung, die keinen, leider, keinen Namen hat, auch nicht 'unbetitelt'; darüber hinaus wie schwierig und unangemessen es ist, eine Ausstellung 'Eine Ausstellung, die keinen Namen hat' zu nennen und somit einfacher Weise von nun an '1913' genannt sein wird. Was letztlich bloß eine vierstellige Zahl ist und nur noch beiläufig einen Heiland mitdenkt und dabei nicht nur einen Rechenfehler, sondern auch die Tatsache unberücksichtigt läßt, daß jener durchaus in der Lage war, über Wasser zu gehen.", 5 September 2013, "Wartezimmer", 6 − 19 September 2013, "1913", 6 − 19 September 2013, "Sentimentale Tonmalerei: Gefühl und Gefüge in C oder der Moment, in dem sich der Gedanke in Form eines Gefühls ankündigt (musikalisch)", 21 September − 5 October 2013, "Der Spiegel", 21 September − 9 November 2013, "1913 hieß Ulrich noch anders: Eine Vorschau", 6 - 19 October 2013, "Der Mont Blanc ist höher als der Mount Everest", 22 October - 9 November 2013, at Galerie Thomas Schulte

After the prologs this past April, Michael Müller’s exhibition cycle will continue at the Galerie Thomas Schulte as of September. In the course of the exhibition the show rooms will be altered repeatedly in structure and detail. Some exhibitions will only be up for several hours while others will go on for longer periods of time. The exhibition cycle in its entirety will culminate in 2014. The starting point of Michael Müller’s exhibition cycle will be Robert Musil’s novel, The Man without Qualities. More than 17 years ago Michael Müller began to translate Musil’s novel into his own system of character- codes. Müller’s system, K4, is composed of circle-segments as well as horizontal and vertical lines. To date the system consists of 400.000 single characters, each baring a separate meaning and function based on a set of ground rules accorded to their shape. Each character can – potentially – be deciphered, however in their accumulation the characters fall back to graphic forms. The wealth of meaning therefore leads to utter unintelligibility. Thus, as a whole the intent of the K4-scheme becomes devoid of purpose and extent. A large sum of Müller’s transcribed bookpages will adorn the gallery walls for the extent of the main exhibitions, along with the K4-archive documenting the origins and development of his writing-system. In front of this – sometimes visible, sometimes hidden behind a curtain – Michael Müller will re-enact exhibitions revolving around the time period of the novel, mainly the year 1913, where Robert Musil’s unfinished book begins. For this he will install works and objects by other artists and non-artists, as well as several of his own works.

During the first exhibition, which will only be on view the evening of the opening on Thursday, 5th of September 2013, 7 to 9 pm, the main exhibition room will not be accessible: visible only through a small gap in the entrance door. Barely audible, an art historian standing alone with the artworks will hold a speech on the concept and structure of the exhibition series. In the gallery’s vestibule, a person will in vain be sitting and awaiting entrance to the exhibition. The inaccessibility of the exhibition, which mirrors the fragmentary character of the novel and locks itself in an explicit style of reading, is thereby taken literally.

It is only in line with the following exhibition, beginning on 6th of September, that the main exhibition space will be made accessible. However, visitors will only be allowed entrance through a waiting room, wherefrom they will be led into the main exhibition. Along with countless folios in K4-writing, an ibis, relating to the Egyptian God Thot, the inventor of language and therewith an insinuation on Müller’s K4-system, becomes a prominent theme, just as in the exhibition’s prolog. Coincidentally, the ibis can be understood as a reference to Musil’s novel, wherein the divine twins Isis and Osiris are placed in juxtaposition to the relationship between Ulrich and his sister Agathe.

In the further course of the exhibition another version of Musil’s novel will be presented in addition to Michael Müller’s K4-character system, in which the third book of Musil’s novel is reproduced mirror-inverted. Just as in Müller’s translation process, the once legible text becomes a series of images, whose meaning is only generated with the help of a mirror.

While some works and groups of works appear but once within the course of the exhibition-series, others are continuously utilized. In time, a network of references between artworks and exhibitions will begin to unfold so that ultimately a multitude of single elements merge into one complex whole. What is being communicated is a plurality of correspondences, which are often implied but belong to a greater, more profound understanding. As a central question in his exhibition cycle, Michael Müller investigates the accessibility of art. In the Musilian sense of digressing from the classical literary concept to the linear narrative structure, Müller too purposely goes against the expectations of his audience. The preliminary and unfinished nature of Musil’s novel-fragment, as well as the impossibility of reaching a precise interpretation thus becomes the mirror of Michael Müller’s exhibition.

"In Situ. Warum kann man Gedanken nicht sehen", 6 April 2013, "Ex Situ", 6 - 20 April 2013, "Prolog: Skizze einer Ausstellung. Vom Problem heute zeitgenössisch zu sein", 10 - 20 April 2013, at Galerie Thomas Schulte

In April 2013, Michael Müller will launch his exhibition cycle, Achtzehn Ausstellungen (Eighteen Exhibitions), at the Galerie Thomas Schulte. The first three exhibitions will be opened on two separate evenings,beginning on Friday, 5th of April 2013, with In Situ. Warum kann man Gedanken nicht sehen (In Situ. Why Thoughts Cannot Be Seen) and Ex Situ, followed by Prolog: Skizze einer Ausstellung. Vom Problem heute zeitgenössisch zu sein (Prologue:Sketch of an Exhibition. On the Problem of Being Contemporary Today) on Tuesday, 9th of April. While InSitu. Warum kann man Gedanken nicht sehen will only be on display for one day – Saturday, 6th of April – the other two exhibitions will be on until Saturday, 20th of April. The exhibition cycle will be continued in the fall of 2013 and will end in 2014.

The show bases itself on the 100-year anniversary of the year 1913, where Robert Musil’s, The Man Without Qualities, begins. Over 17 years ago, Michael Müller started to conceptually translate Musil’s novel into his own graphic handwriting, known as K4, based on horizontal and vertical lines, as well as segments of circles. A large portion of the transcribed book pages will adorn the walls of the gallery’s main room for the extent of 15 exhibitions. In alternating shows and against this backdrop – that will be visible during some occasions and behind a curtain during others – Müller will present works and objects – some his own and some taken from other artists and non-artists – that are placed together in the context and atmosphere of Musil’s novel. Through the continuous roll reversals from artist to curator, Müller establishes a distance to the exhibition industry, and thereby questions the functions of all protagonists involved in it – from the gallerist to the collector,the critic,and most of all,the curator and the artist.

In the exhibition, In Situ. Warum kann man Gedanken nicht sehen, that will only be on display in the gallery for one day, notable themes will make themselves visible. These themes will be carried from exhibition to exhibition, taking on new forms, in ever changing contexts. A portrait of Robert Musil will hang on one of the gallery walls, in front of which will stand a pedestal baring the original copy of The Man Without Qualities, as well as several ancient Egyptian replicas and originals referencing Musil’s seminal work. A clay handmirror depicts the divine twins, Isis and Osiris, who were at once siblings and lovers – a myth that Musil juxtaposes with his protagonist’s relationship with his sister. In the course of the exhibition, several other objects will be placed in relationship with the Egyptian relics, including the sketched copy of a Renaissance drawing of Harpocrates, who – beckoning silence – holds his hand to his mouth.

The exhibition, Ex Situ, will be on display in the gallery’s Corner Space for the extent of the prologue. In a cabinet baring the inscription, Le salon de l’éphémère, will hang the copy of a flower still life by Henri Fantin-Latour. In front of this, on a pedestal freestanding in the room, will sit the bouquet of flowers depicted in the painting. In the course of the exhibition, a mirror will reflect the bouquet’s wilting process.

For the exhibition, Prolog: Skizze einer Ausstellung. Vom Problem heute zeitgenössisch zu sein, that will open in the gallery’s main room on Tuesday, 9th of April, will be altered in the course of the duration, accommodating new works. In this instance, the portrait of Robert Musil will be replaced by a table of contents of the “third book” fabricated by Müller as a part of The Man Without Qualities. The table of contents will be surrounded by a long text split into two columns, whereby one column is filled by Musil’s unpublished introduction to The Man Without Qualities, while the other is an introduction to the exhibition itself.

Additionally, in the gallery’s main room, Müller will show a painting of a park landscape by the German painter, Elsa Weise, a student of Matisse and Corinth. Directly next to her work will hang a child’s portrait by Philipp Otto Runge, which Müller has claimed from Felix Weise’s prominent collection,and partly restored. The artist has added so-called captchas to both of the works. These tests verify whether inputs on Internet- forms were generated by humans or computers. The words “human” and “art” presented in this case, can only be distinguished by human observers. Hereby, Müller’s central theme is, on the one hand, the perception of art as a unique human trait, and on the other, the transience of cultural goods – which Müller demonstrates by returning forgotten and partially heavily damaged works back to the public eye. The objects in the prologue represent the starting points of developing directions that flow through the exhibition cycle, uniting the individual exhibition pieces with each other. In time, a network will unfold, creating references between the respective works and exhibitions, until finally, out of many sensuous single parts, a complex entirety will assemble. The novel’s rawness and incompleteness, as well as the impossibility of precise analysis will become the mirror of the exhibition.

"Das Scheitern der Oberfläche" at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 10 September - 5 November 2011

On Friday, th 9th of September 2011, from 6 to 9 pm, Galerie Thomas Schulte will be opening Michael Müller’s first solo show at the gallery. The artist, born in 1970, presents six new works in, Das Scheitern der Oberfläche (The Failure of the Surface): these works centralize around the systematic and structural phenomena in language and the dissolution or refraction there of.

Parallel to the exhibition in our own space, the Galerie Thomas Schulte will also be presenting Michael Müller at this year’s abc art berlin contemporary, about painting (September 7–11, Station-Berlin).

In six new works created especially for the exhibition, Das Scheitern der Oberfläche, Michael Müller seeks out systematics and structures in the subject central to his work, language: he orders and at the same time allows these systematics and structures to fail by revealing the irregularities, contradictions, and fissures that are fundamentally inherent to every system.

In the exhibition’s main work, Index der Willkür, unvollendet (Index of Arbitrariness, Incomplete), Müller attempts to organize the process of language development in the case of individuals who work with concepts of conveying content by way of text and language. 95 text panels are placed in chronological order along the walls in the main space of the gallery, and a portrait is placed on the opposite wall across from each. But as is always the case in Müller’s systematics, the regularity of the systematization is interrupted. Some of the portraits are abstract, while others are hidden behind tinted glass or are missing entirely. Each text panel, which features a source text by the individual portrayed, the name of the writing system, the initials of the individual and their date of birth, tells its own story of language development: for example, the story of James Dee, who developed a language to communicate with angels, or a poem by John Milton that was the first literary text to be translated into Braille.

Index der Willkür, unvollendet is interrupted in three locations by large aluminum Dibond slabs, painted white, reminiscent of an oversized open book. On the flat surface, traces of pencil are clearly visible: their content, taken from journal-like notes made by the artist, remain illegible to the beholder. As promised by the exhibition title, the surface fails as a foundation and in so doing rejects the beholder, as it were.

Tile is an important medium for Müller: its resistant materiality as a painting surface rejects the artist in a general way and thus allows him to fail. Alongside the entrance area, is located the spatial installation, XI. Gesang (At the Backside of a Gas Station in the Plain of Lethe), a room completely tiled in white industrial tiles, in which an emergency exit sign shows the ancient Greek word for “exit” while signaling in Morse code passages on the Visit to Hades from Homer’s Odyssey. The reference to the Odyssey as one of the most influential texts of Western culture makes a direct link to the artist’s search for ideal modes of expression and a way out of his very own past.

For the four-part work, Ghostwriter, the artist had by way of the Internet two differently priced – and thus qualitatively different – reviews of exhibitions written by providing the same twelve keywords to two different critics. The commissioned texts are accompanied by a handwritten copy made by the artist. The lines separating copy and original are consciously blurred and their significance reversed.

The sound installation, Confusio Linguarum, which is on view in our Corner Space, refers to the birth hour of languages. From a tower of speakers, recordings of the text passage Genesis 1.11 read in various languages can be heard, the story of the Tower of Babel. By overlapping sound passages, Müller reconstructs the Babylonian confusion of languages, and refers at the same time to a different failure, the failure to build the Tower of Babel.

A second sound installation is placed in the gallery’s main space, and immerses the visitors to the gallery with the sound of the so-called, Ich-Oper (Ego Opera), which was composed by Thom Willems and is performed by Kate Strong. In this work with the title, Weltempfänger: Ich-Oper (World Receiver: Ego Opera), Michael Müller is concerned with the dissolution of identity and explores language’s identity-forming function.

"Was wird er damit tun?" at Aanant & Zoo, 9 October - 5 November 2010

In previous exhibitions, Michael Müller had associated biography, different attempts of the usage of materiality, and colonial history – for the recent exhibition Was wird er damit tun? however, there are no formal or contextual references apparent. The title makes it clear, that there will be more questions than answers.

Although drawing is Müller’s most favorite technique, he constantly extends his methods of expression. He combines works on paper and canvas with sculptural works consisting of tiles, wood and colored acrylic glass. An ordinary stretcher frame is encompassed with a pink bubble wrap entitled Kleines Nichts. The traditional utensil for an artist – the canvas – is lacking. What remains is an empty cover with a label on, giving information about title, material, and size of the work. This reflection upon the own artistic process ironizes the cliche of the art of failure as it were.

Installed at a corner, the diptych Es gibt keine Monster - a series of portraiture of Adolf Hitler as failed art student in Vienna - represents the features of an ordinary young man, whose later atrocities are not signalized at all. The detailed drawings are entitled as Photoshop at the Barber and A Portrait of a Young Man as an Artist (Not for Sale).

Did you see me coming? is contrasting the other works in abstraction and size. The white base enfolds an outline of a very thin pencil drawing. Addicted to the artist’s monologue the work is hermetically sealed and refuses any exterior confusion. The apparently autonomous space of the image is filled with incomprehensible structures. Thus, the work rather unveils questions for regularity and order. Only through the title one can recognize the artist’s suspicion towards autonomy.