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MICHAEL MÜLLER ///WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ARCO madrid and THE ARMORY SHOWnew york 2015

Artists need to find their own belief system, especially in our post-modern age. Few are willing to rely on the old staples of religion, romanticism or na-tionalism. Individuals who create truly new work need to see the world in their own unique way.

Michael Müller, a 43-year-old Berliner artist, has plotted a bold and original course through life, in part due to his remarkable background. His Indian grandmother had married an Irish soldier who abandoned her as soon as she’dd followed him to England. As she had no money, her daughters had to be given up to an orphanage for years. In time one of them fell in love with a German man, despite him speaking no English and she speaking no German. Their son Michael grew up in Germany detached from his Indian heritage, which was all but denied by his mother.

At school near Mainz he knew that he was different from his classmates, not least when told that he couldn’t play Jesus in the Christmas play as he didn’t have blond hair…„I began to realise that things were never as I was told,” he said when we met in his Berlin home. „And in that doubt I began to test myself, to find my own way to understand and ex-plain the world.”

At the age of 16 Müller first heard Indian music and saw a photograph of Tibetan monks. The experience „sparked” something in him and — as soon as he was able — he went to India and Ladakh where he spent much of the next 15 years. But not before a spell at the Dusseldorf Art Academy where he studied with Magdalena Jetelová. „I had believed with every fibre of my body that I wanted to be at the Academy, but when I started, I had no idea why.”

Rather than formal art school education, it was India and travel that inspired him, leading him first to create a remarkable series of vast maps of imaginary places, the largest of which is now 22 metres long and, he says, will take him the rest of his life to finish.

„A map is a way of understanding the world,” said Müller, recalling his travelling days. „I asked myself, “How do we understand the world?” We have so many belief systems but none of them can be proven. How do we know what we like, what is beautiful or tasty? Where do individual aesthetics come from? For me, it’s down to training, to our upbringing and environment.”

Müller’s questions then led him to consider the nature of written language, and to invent his own. His refusal to loan a German edition of Robert Musil’s philosophical novel The Man Without

/// RORY MacLEAN MEETS MICHAEL MÜLLER ///

For his solo presentations at arco in Madrid and the armory show in New York in spring 2015 Michael Müller re-installs his exhibition „Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“ (What Is Considered Art? What Does It Mean to Be True to Oneself?) that he showed at Galerie Thomas Schulte in 2014. Rory MacLean met the artist to talk with him about his concept and perception of the world:

Linie, 2014Plaster and pink carpet

Dimensions variable

View of „Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“ by Michael Müller at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 2014

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

Qualities to a non-German-speaking friend led him to translate the book for her into „K4.” This invented language, which began as an intellectual exercise, now consists of more than 400,000 different characters, each of which has been hand-drawn by Müller. „For me, the work moved more and more into the realm of art, because ultimately it is not simply an invented language but a means of the mapping of information.”

Müller’s intense drawings, paint-ings and three-dimensional „performa-tive” sculptures are diverse, challenging and provocative: his four-metre-square drawing of a fish Mola Mola spirals out from the centre as if in meditation, re-flecting back to his days in a monas-tery; his Selfportrait of Ibrahim Vitalis al Said — created as he fasted through Ramadan — explores the Arabic equiva-lent of his name and hence his identity; in Supernova translated poems — and so meaning — are explored through a series of languages such as Urdu,

Tibetan and Karen; his 300 panel Index of Arbitrariness, incomplete (Index der Willkür, unvollendet) considers how languages are used socially and politi-cally. In his especially powerful, recent work Weltempfänger: Ich-Oper, a wom-an voice’s echoes out of an old radio. As she speaks she realises that her body doesn’t exist and — in a script written by Müller — she begins to conjure imag-inary friends to explain the world to her. „When I start a work I don’t have a visual motif in mind,” he said. „I don’t see the connection between content and medi-um. Often a work can exist in my head for years before I settle on the means to visualise it. To my mind an artist’s life must always be busy with research and contemplation. The final product is less important.”

Müller’s art is simply a framework for him to ask questions, and then to provoke us to do the same. For example at his latest Berlin show at the Galerie Thomas Schulte, visitors were kept at

the entrance while indoors — behind closed doors — a haughty art historian talked about the works on display, then asked the paintings themselves if they were art.

„In the canon, through established and accepted values, we are told what to believe, what is good and bad. I don’t accept those dictated choices,” said Michael Müller in conclusion, pushing back his thatch of black hair. „I need to discover for myself what is good or bad, beautiful or tasty. At the core of this search is my desire to understand the wonderful world that surrounds us.”

—Rory MacLean, June 2014

This article was commissioned by the Goethe-Institut London as part of the online magazine Meet the Germans, published at www.goethe.de/meetthe-germans

„I asked myself, “How do we understand the world?” We have so many

belief systems but none of them can be proven. How do we know what we like, what is beautiful or tasty? Where do individual aesthetics come from? For me, it’s down to training, to our upbringing and environment.

View of „Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“ by Michael Müller at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 2014

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

(left)Extended artist list, 17th c./2014

Digital print on paper, oil on copper, steel, wood, Hoopoe, reconstructed dead Paradise bird

205 x 145 x 55 cm / 80 2/3 x 57 x 21 2/3 in

(right)View of „Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“

by Michael Müller at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 2014

„From a young age, he says, “I didn’t want to make something where you could

walk into the room and say ‘This is a Müller.’” Art practice is simply a vessel for the artist to explore what he’s interested in: the cacophony of these interests — includ-ing Buddhist monks, cartography, art history, and social tumult — drives the work.

—Alexander Forbes on Michael Müller’s 18-exhibition cycle in Modern Painters

(left)Abtragen oder hinzufügen (von vorne Heraklit von Ephesos) /

Abtragen oder hinzufügen (von der Seite Heraklit von Ephesos), 20142 parts work, pencil on pink paper, framed

each 43,5 x 31,5 cm / 17 x 12 1/2 in

(right)Der Kopf des zwölfjährigen Jesus, A. D. in anderer Zeichentechnik, 2014

Pencil on pink paper43,5 x 31,5 cm / 17 x 12 1/2 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

View of „Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“ by Michael Müller at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 2014

„Musil’s lost young man was also the spiritus rector of Müller’s recent exhibition “Was

nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wawhrsein?” (What Is Considered Art? What Does It Mean to Be True to Oneself?), an exceptionally intense — even manic — congregation of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and texts. As the show’s title suggests, this abundance (the checklist cites a whopping eighty-six objects) elaborated on nothing less than the nature and meaning of art and the essence and drive of artistic creation. The show thus explored many of the issues or leit-motifs that infuse Musil’s fragmentary novel: the tension between rationality and mysticism, between the individual and the masses, between serious engagement and ironic detachment.

—Astrid Mania on“Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wawhrsein?” in Artforum

Das Leiden Christi, 2014Glazed ceramic

16 x 36 x 22 cm / 6 1/3 x 14 1/4 x 8 2/3 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

Deutscher Rehrücken, 2014Wood, building foam, plaster, gauze bandage, acrylic and wire, t-shirt, lacquer, shashlik skewer152 x 125 x 40 cm / 59 3/4 x 49 1/4 x 15 3/4 in

Relaunch at the Museumshop, 2014Aluminium stand, bag, flyer

223 x 100 x 40 cm / 87 3/4 x 39 1/3 x 15 3/4 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

Archaische Figur, 2014Iron on pedestal32 x 23 cm / 12 2/3 x 9 in

Aufbruch, 2014Glazed ceramic on MDF pedestal63 x 60 x 40 cm / 24 3/4 x 23 2/3 x 15 3/4 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

Malen und anmalen, 2014Acrylic and oil, shell, flower, lace doily60 x 55 x 25 cm / 23 2/3 x 21 2/3 x 9 3/4 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

(left)Miezekatze, 2014Adhesive tape, card, soot, lacquer35 x 25 x 15 cm / 13 3/4 x 9 3/4 x 6 in

(right)Sattelpunkt, 2014Adhesive tape, card, soot and lacquer36 x 44 x 37 cm / 14 1/4 x 17 1/3 x 14 1/2 in

Trojanisches Pferd, 2014Adhesive tape, card, soot, lacquer38 x 26 x 13 cm / 15 x 10 1/4 x 5 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

(left)View of „Was nennt sich Kunst, was heißt uns wahrsein?“

by Michael Müller at Galerie Thomas Schulte, 2014

(right)Prinz und Sklave, 2014

Plaster and painted MDF130 x 100 x 50 cm / 51 1/4 x 39 1/3 x 19 2/3 in

Was bleibt? (red, grey, on white), 2015Color lacquer on canvas, framed

180 x 360 cm / 70 3/4 x 141 3/4 in

/// michael müller WAS NENNT SICH KUNST ///

Michael Müller, born 1970 in Ingelheim on the Rhine, lives and works in Berlin. He studied sculpting and fine arts at the Kunst-akademie in Düsseldorf with Magdalena Jetelová. Alongside numerous gallery exhibitions, Müller has participated in many institutional group exhibitions in the past ten years in Germa-ny and elsewhere, for instance at the Kunsthaus Dresden (2012) and at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik in Bonn (2013). In 2014, Müller‘s works were included in shows

This online catalogue is published on the occasion of Michael Müller‘s presentations with Galerie Thomas Schulte at arco in Madrid and at The Armory Show in New York in spring 2015.

Photo credits: The photos appear courtesy of the artist and Galerie Thomas Schulte

Photos: Mathias Schormann and Jan Brockhaus, Berlin © 2015, the artist, the photograhers, Galerie Thomas Schulte

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GALERIE THOMAS SCHULTE gmbh / CHARLOTTENSTRASSE 24 / 10117 BERLINtelefon; 0049 (0)30 20 60 89 90 / telefax; 0049 (0)30 20 60 89 91 0MAIL@GALERIETHOMASSCHULTE.de / WWW.GALERIETHOMASSCHULTE.de öffnungszeiten; DI.– SAM. 12oo – 18oo uhr / opening hours; TUE.– SAT. 12 pm – 6 pm

at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow as well as at Kunstsaele and at the headquarters of Sanofi in Berlin. For summer 2015, Müller is preparing the continuation of his 18-exhibition cycle at Galerie Thomas Schulte. For three plays directed by Armin Holz at the theatre in Linz in autum 2015, Müller is occupied with the designing of the sets and costumes.