Michael Müller
"Befindlichkeiten gegen die Nullachse und anderer atmosphärischer Druck"
13. September - 25. Oktober 2008
"Befindlichkeiten gegen die Nullachse und anderer atmosphärischer Druck"
13. September - 25. Oktober 2008
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» deutsche version
His work with these fragmented citations, which tends to be nervous and physically strained, is perhaps most obvious in the hatching drawings done with pencil that resemble clouds and other atmospheric manifestations – works that are situated precisely on the border between drawing and writing.
Michael Müller arranges different translated versions and editions of a biographical novel titled “Biographie von Kautschuk” (Biography of Natural Rubber), from which he extrapolates elements, figures and forms. The novel is an autobiographical fragment and as such bears literary testimony to an encounter between Western and Eastern cultures – in an “intermediate area” that today can be termed postcolonial, but of which it is not clear what can follow its “post”. The confusing complicatedness of the hierarchical, ethnic and gender relations, and the associated feelings the fragment gives rise to, attain something pictorial in the dialogues. Moreover, with the example of a cultural history of natural rubber extraction under colonial conditions and the further development of table tennis which it enabled –
» deutsche version
His work with these fragmented citations, which tends to be nervous and physically strained, is perhaps most obvious in the hatching drawings done with pencil that resemble clouds and other atmospheric manifestations – works that are situated precisely on the border between drawing and writing.
Michael Müller arranges different translated versions and editions of a biographical novel titled “Biographie von Kautschuk” (Biography of Natural Rubber), from which he extrapolates elements, figures and forms. The novel is an autobiographical fragment and as such bears literary testimony to an encounter between Western and Eastern cultures – in an “intermediate area” that today can be termed postcolonial, but of which it is not clear what can follow its “post”. The confusing complicatedness of the hierarchical, ethnic and gender relations, and the associated feelings the fragment gives rise to, attain something pictorial in the dialogues. Moreover, with the example of a cultural history of natural rubber extraction under colonial conditions and the further development of table tennis which it enabled –
rubber allowed the bats to be coated, making the sequences of motion precise in a technically novel way, accelerating them and making them unpredictably nonlinear – a meta-narrative is introduced that, in its various manifestations as drawing, sculpture, abstract painting, and print, elucidates the basic structure of Michael Müller’s “endeavour”.
He not only speaks about resources as the leading sediments of a political history – through his analogous conclusion his own (“authentic”) history of identity is made experienceable and manipulable as a resource. The tiniest details of form, translation and arrangement found in the installation provoke critical questions pertaining to the auctorial nature of the ensemble, but also to the precision that autobiographical and historico-cultural discourses are able to generate in the first place. Basically, the evolving level of critique, which is ambivalent because it is itself extremely involved, is directed towards a mode of thought for which everything becomes a resource.
(Clemens Krümmel)