Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien

Ute Müller

08 Dec 2017 - 25 Jan 2018

Ute Müller, Untitled, 2016
UTE MÜLLER
8 December 2017 — 25 January 2018

Articulate visual bodies of sculpture and painting lead off Ute Müller’s (*1978 Graz, lebt in Wien) sensitive, delicately harmonious oeuvre. Ambivalence plays its role as an attitude and aspect of the search for form and anti-form, whether the pieces are casts of negative forms that become recognizable objects upon closer inspection, or arrangements of found items that have been slightly altered and thus charged with difference. Müller shows her sculptures on pedestals, and despite their elegance, they remain unapproachable and secretive. Even the paintings are gratifyingly open-ended; in abstraction lies a clearly sketched-out position. Life-sized canvases shimmer in a minor key, while fragmented formations resembling drawings circulate above tempera textures.
Skillfully, she plays with painting, history, and reference without missing specifics as she wrestles with form, idea, and presentation. In a slow dance through Müller’s visual spaces, her attempt to grasp it all becomes palpable, although she does not reveal her cards prematurely.