gdm Taipei is pleased to present “Michael Müller: Thinking about Painting”, featuring the artist’s newest series of paintings bearing the same title in German. Denken zu Malerei (Thinking about Painting) reflects an introspective process: one that questions intentions and interpretations. Through a diverse array of painterly techniques, Müller investigates the friction between the painted image and the physical limits of the canvas, to challenge long-held assumptions about what a painting is—and what it can become.
After a period of 20 years devoted to drawing, Michael Müller’s return to painting in 2014 was inspired by an indomitable urge to counteract the conventional idea of framing. The material sensitivity, large dimensions and irregular forms of his drawings required special framing for protection. It is precisely this restriction that drew Müller back into painting, to question new possibilities of shaping a relationship between the image and the space surrounding it. In 2017, the artist began experimenting with painting on layers of glass atop a base of canvas or aluminum in his series Vor und hinter dem Glas (In Front of and Behind the Glass), transforming the material from a passive protective layer into an active painting surface, allowing, guiding, and blocking the viewer’s gaze. This multi-layered approach produces both a virtual depth through color and form, as well as a physical one, generated by the reflections of the glass, the shadows of the brushstrokes, and the viewer’s own positioning in relationship to the work. Thinking about Painting takes this approach one step further.
Through these paintings that seek to transcend predefined limitations imposed by the shape and size of the canvas, he metaphorically embodies the desire to go beyond—the systems we have been brought up in, the perspectives that we find ourselves chained to; our understandings of ourselves. What would the painting have looked like if the canvas had no edges, or limits? What would be lost from the composition if the artwork was not extended beyond the constraints of its physical borders? This radical rethinking of materially circumscribed boundaries is a core tenant of Müller's practice, which strives to push existing norms to their limits.
As MIchael Müller explains, “In painting, I search for what cannot be seen. An artist discovers what is initially invisible. Painting is about making that visible.”
