Michael Müller –
Difficult Pictures

Editor
Philipp Bollmann

Authors
Larissa Kikol, Oliver Körner von Gustorf, Travis Jeppesen

Design
Neue Gestaltung

Publisher
Distanz Verlag

Format
28 x 22.4 cm

Features
84 pages, 31 color illustrations, hardcover

ISBN
978-3-95476-409-9

Publication
May 2021

Kaufen

In his paintings, drawings, installations and sculptures as well as performances, Michael Müller draws on linguistic, numerical-mathematical and stellar systems, which, despite a certain empirical basis, are usually freely developed by the artist. The examination of forms, methods and norms constitutes the core of his works, which are furthermore influenced by Müller’s travels and stays in India, his grandmother’s homeland.

Müller’s painting is programmatic. His large-format series revolve around the process of image creation. The series Difficult Pictures, the subject of this publication, consists of expansive diptychs with canvases of varying lengths, which bring photographic reproductions and painterly gestures into a symbiotic form. On one wing of the diptych, Müller begins to develop non-representational painting. It is photographed, digitally processed and finally printed on the second wing. In doing so, the artist duplicates parts of the image and in turn overlays other details. Subsequently, parts of both elements of the picture are painted over and provided with new painterly gestures. What emerges is a palimpsest in which different times interlock on the canvas.

The catalogue, published for the exhibition in the new and still under-construction spaces of the Wemhöner Collection, provides for the first time a comprehensive insight into the artist’s complex painterly œuvre. With an introduction by curator Philipp Bollmann and texts by Larissa Kikol, Oliver Koerner von Gustorf and Travis Jeppesen.