KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Michael Müller

29 Nov 2015 - 24 Jan 2016

© Michael Müller
HERMES & HERMAPHRODITOS, 2015 (Detail)
Courtesy Michael Müller
MICHAEL MÜLLER
Who’s Speaking?
29 November 2015 – 24 January 2016

Michael Müller's first institutional solo exhibition WHO’S SPEAKING? brings together works from recent years with specifically-developed new productions, which use various ways for investigating the question of artistic authorship.

From Müller’s perspective, “who is speaking?” also means “what is being said?” and “why?” But also “who is listening?”; The exhibited works return time and again to the issue of how an artist becomes visible in his work. Each single piece stands at a pressure point between the application or transformation of historical and contemporary artistic codes, and the artist’s personal obsessions.

For WHO’S SPEAKING? Müller has conceived new versions of two figures—Hermes and Hermaphroditos—who weave a web of references and connections between the individual works, and accompany the viewer throughout the exhibition. As the voice in a new sound installation, the protagonist of a video, or as a figurative sculpture that reverses the relationship between work and viewer, these two figures from Greek mythology appear in both expected and unexpected places, and link the content of the exhibition’s two floors formally.

Guided tours through the exhibition
INSIDE/INSIGHT: Talk between Michael Müller and Ellen Blumenstein

The exhibition is funded by Michael Heins (Herzogenrath), Geraldine Michalke, Ángel and Clara Nieto, Stephan Oehmen, Peppermint Holding GmbH, Ernst Schering Foundation, Berlin, and Romina Polley.

The catalog is funded by NAT
 

Tags: Ellen Blumenstein, Michael Müller