The Resolution of Original and Reproduction

Michael Müller (born 1970 in Ingelheim am Rhein, lives and works in Berlin) bases his paintings, drawings, installations, sculptures, and performances on linguistic, numerical-mathematical, and stellar systems, which, despite a certain empirical foundation, are mostly freely reimagined by the artist. The engagement with forms, methods, and norms forms the core of his work, which is also 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 Images, the subject of this publication, consists of expansive diptychs with canvases of varying lengths that 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 the process, the artist duplicates image sections and overlays other details. Subsequently, parts of both elements of the image are painted over and provided with new painterly gestures. What emerges is a palimpsest in which different times intertwine on the canvas.

The catalog published for the exhibition in the new and still-under-construction spaces of the Wemhöner collection offers a comprehensive insight into the complex painterly oeuvre of the artist for the first time. It includes an introduction by curator Philipp Bollmann and texts by Larissa Kikol, Oliver Koerner von Gustorf, and Travis Jeppesen.