THOMAS MÜLLER

Although he sometimes uses liquid media, overall Mϋller tends to favour pulsing, rippling wave-like configurations of densely packed fine lines that create spatial ambiguities. In these he sometimes incorporates collages. Often they are presented in books as well as on gallery walls.

Early Life

From 1979 to 1988 Mϋller studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. During 1991 he received a scholarship from the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation, and over 1991—1992 another for the Cité des Arts in Paris. In 2003 he went to America when he was Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas.

Thomas Müller Artworks

Drawing Practice

Mϋller is unusual in that he focuses exclusively on drawing. These untitled images never serve as preparatory studies for paintings but function in their own right as the final artwork. Originally studying both painting and drawing, in the mid-1990s he decided to focus solely on the latter.

Rich in associations with the body, landscape, fabric, vegetation, animals, household objects, and weather, these organic works are rarely totally abstract, for vaguely figurative content can often be discerned by those imaginatively inclined: flecked skeins of tweedy textiles disintegrating into dust-bunny fluff; wrestling male bodies that twist and turn into mysterious pictographic codes; sticky translucent webs that fray and slither apart to then re-coagulate; criss-crossing black chalk bands in convulsive woolly transit; sinewy growths that swell, buckle, and jack-knife; clusters of overlapping turds that transmute into dark boulders falling from a cloudy sky.

Mϋller’s orchestrated marks reside in formations of very considered shape. Some shapes are clean, spiky, and crisp with their edges; others are smudgy with watery washes, as if murky homes for shoals of protozoa.

The white spaces around and between such spontaneously drawn and densely packed morphological elements are an important contribution to the overall dynamic. Their shaped glare startles us into snapping to attention, to refocus on what the finely rendered forms are collectively doing. Their varied membranes define borders that activate dramatic lakes of ‘blank’ visual energy resting on the paper surface. ‘Undrawing’ that within drawing creates graphic power.

Exhibitions

Thomas Müller has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions. Solo exhibitions include Circles, Galerie Wenger, Zurich (2020); Thomas Mϋller, Centre d’Arts Plastiques, Royan (2020); Allele: Recent Works, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London (2019); Meandering, Galerie Werner Klein, Cologne (2019); Drawings, Sean Scully Studio, New York (2018); Different Lines, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London (2015); and Touching, Relating, Dividing, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London (2012).

Selected group exhibitions include 7 Künstler*innen — 7 Räume: William N. Copley, Franziska Holstein, Karin Kneffel, Dieter Krieg, Thomas Müller, Karl Georg Pfahler, Cornelius Völker, Galerie Klaus Gerrit Friese, Berlin (2021); Linie Line Linea: Contemporary Drawing, Millî Reasürans Art Gallery, Istanbul (2020); and Drawn World: Zeichnungen von Menzel bis Warhol, Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf (2019).

Thomas Müller’s work in included in numerous institutional collections, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

John Hurrell | Ocula | 2021