BIKINI ON MARS: MICHAEL MÜLLER

As part of his two parallel exhibitions Anton im Bastrock and Bikini on Mars opening during Gallery Weekend Berlin 2020, in the gallery’s Corner Space, Müller has stretched six monumental abstract paintings entitled Mental Driftwood into the frames of the large shop windows. The paintings are visible from behind the glass looking out on to the busy street. They were created spontaneously, intuitively, and painted by the artist, not with brushes, but with his bare hands. Each painting is unique and separate from the others: they do not complement each other to form a Gesamtwerk, but instead appear as isolated and equal components of a collage. It is only during the painting process that a structure gradually crystallizes and through which a composition emerges. The artist sees the works as hybrids that have become alien to him. Through them he questions the origin of abstract pictorial ideas. The tone of the work is set by the first color of paint chosen by the artist. The format of the paintings is determined by the location of the work. All that follows is unplanned. Such a painterly process might incite the viewer to question the degree to which the images are products of conscious decision-making, or whether, like driftwood, they may have been washed up to the surface from the artist’s subconscious.

Inside the gallery—with the help of various installation methods—Müller enters into a form of negotiation with the viewer: building a room within a room in the gallery’s Corner Space, the work Beyond the White Cube (Zeigen) consists of a partially-enclosed space lined with cream-colored, sound-absorbing foam panels. The room houses a 19th-century Christian processional figurine, whose missing arm has been replaced by a scaled-down 3D-print of Müller’s own arm, which points upwards into the air. Two small puzzles hang from the on the padded walls behind the figure, each depicting the interlocked motifs of a turtle and hermit crab—symbols of slowness, perpetual quest and wandering.

Standing in contrast to the symbolism of introspection and isolation in the Corner Space, the work Bikini on Mars in the gallery’s Window Space, features a giant, golden mirror ball, sitting behind an orange-tinted window. The space is thus bathed in orange light, through which the moving reflections from the street outside, interfere with and obstruct our perception of color of the painting hanging in the room. The installation is complemented by a large standee with the photographic print of a black man and a pink figurine seated in front of a rock. Turning the space into a realm full of stimuli and allusions, Müller provokes the viewer’s desire for narrative—a need that can never be satisfied by abstraction.