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until 09.10.| #2846ARTatBerlin | Galerie Thomas Schulte will present the first version of the solo show by the artist Michael Müller, which consists of two parts: “Anton im Bastrock” and the installation “Bikini on Mars” in the gallery’s Corner Space, starting on 9 September 2020. The second version, “Aesthetic judgement and selflessness: exposing oneself to something with an empty gaze and without support”, begins on 17 October and will be shown until 7 November 2020.
This is the first solo presentation of the artist, which takes place in the gallery following his extensive exhibition cycle “18 Exhibitions” (2013 to 2017). For the first time, the two exhibitions will focus on Müller’s painterly oeuvre on a larger scale. Müller is known to date primarily for his conceptual-complex, multi-layered installations, performances and as a curator. Several new groups of works of programmatic painting will be presented, “Vor und hinter dem Glas”, “Handicap”, “Schwierige Bilder”, “Abstrakte Autogamie”, “Verschränkte Werke” and “Urteilskraft”. In it, Müller examines the classical approaches, methods and techniques of painting – its formats, materials, presentation and perception – and questions our learned approaches to and expectations of painting. The large-format picture series are each dedicated to different aspects of the process of creating a picture.
As an installation visible from afar in urban space, Müller has stretched six monumental abstract paintings entitled “Mentale Treibhölzer” into the frames of the large display windows in Corner Space. The paintings were created spontaneously, without any sketch and were painted by the artist with his bare hands. They are complete in themselves and do not complement each other to form a complete work, but rather appear as the isolated and equal components of a collage. Müller describes painting as intuitive. Only in the process does a structure gradually crystallize and the composition emerge. The artist sees the “mental driftwoods” as hybrids that have become alien to himself. In them he questions the origin of abstract pictorial ideas. In addition to the formats dictated by the sizes of the shop windows, only the first color with which he begins painting is considered set; everything else develops unplanned. So are the paintings washed up from the subconscious like driftwood or are they not based on conscious decision-making mechanisms after all?
View in Michael Müllers Studio in Berlin, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Photo: Marco Funke, 2020
With the help of various installation elements, Müller enters into negotiation with the viewer in the exhibition space. At the center of the room is the painting installation entitled Urteilskraft: A painting is attached to a free-standing metal rod with a movable swivel joint. The viewer is invited to grasp the painting’s frame, which is equipped with handles, and play with the orientation of the painting. The viewer is thus enabled to view the painting as a three-dimensional object from all sides and to break through the determinism of standardized forms of presentation in painting. This is different with the installation Bikini on Mars. A large golden disco ball and an orange window foil bathe the room in orange light and determine the perception of the painting inside.
After the first version of the exhibition, which opens during Gallery Weekend Berlin, there will be a second hanging halfway through the exhibition. In this version, all installation elements will be removed from the exhibition space and the paintings will be presented in a classically reduced, concentrated form.
Michael Müller, born 1970 in Ingelheim am Rhein, is a conceptual artist whose diverse, comprehensive oeuvre cannot be deciphered by any one-sided interpretation. He continuously expands the methods of his artistic expression, combining works on paper with painting, text-based works, sculpture, found objects, music and performance, and has even developed a cosmetics line and a fashion collection. In 2018 he was nominated for the Böttcherstrasse Prize at the Kunsthalle Bremen. Important solo exhibitions took place at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2016/17) and at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015/16).
Exhibition dates: Wednesday, September 9 – Friday, October 9, 2020
To the Gallery
Exhibition Michael Müller – Galerie Thomas Schulte | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
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