Ulrike Müller works across a range of mediums including drawing, wall painting and vitreous enamel. Common motifs in her work include linear abstractions, flat shapes, shoes, and flowers. Müller began incorporating the latter to overcome assumptions associated with modernism and gender, showing that art need not be confined to a single interpretation.
Read MoreMüller's works, while abstracted, often invite figurative readings. Subtle, erotic contours of the body appear across her practice, including the lithograph series 'Franza' (2013–14), in which abstracted forms resemble close-ups of pubic regions. In the handwoven wool tapestry Rug (estamos en contacto) (2019), a pair of heel-wearing feet—rendered in clean lines inside a geometrical grid painted with orange, blue and burgundy hues—cannot be ascribed to any gender.
Müller's exploration of physical identity often carries over to the deconstructions of space. Her 2016 solo exhibition And Then Some at Callicoon Fine Arts in New York featured rugs, drawings, enamel works depicting semi-recognisable icons, and a wall painting that seemed to extend the grey colour of the gallery's floors until it crept up onto the walls. For the 2018 exhibition Container at Kunstverein Dusseldorf, Müller again painted the gallery's walls grey to create a three-dimensional pictorial space.
Accordingly, Müller's spatial alterations extend into installation. Exhibited at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria and the Brooklyn Museum in 2012, Herstory Invention was made in response to Judy Chicago's feminist installation The Dinner Party (1974–79), in which 39 place settings paid homage to historical and mythical female figures. For the exhibition, Müller invited feminists, queer artists and other 'interested New Yorkers' to make objects inspired by quotes on t-shirts from the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn.
