Work Series:
Indexes, 2007–2022

The works of the group Indexes often consist of hundreds of parts, all placed in acrylic glass frames in a similar, small, handy format; in the fully installed work, they unfold into a considerable dimension: several meters tall and wide. The group of indexes includes the following works: Vergleichen [Compare] (2012–2022), Der Sinn des Wolkenvermessens (Working Title: Wolkenatlas) für Jean-Luc Nancy [The Sense of Measuring Clouds (Working Title: Cloud Atlas) for Jean-Luc Nancy] (2007/2014–2021), Systema (2009/2010), and Index der Willkür, unvollendet [Index of Arbitrariness, Unfinished] (2010–2011).

All of these works are based on a strict conceptual approach that tries to run through all the variations on a theme and, in an artistic-scholarly manner with a claim to completeness, to take the incompletability of this project and categorize it in the form of an index and present it in an aesthetic work of art. Whereas it is the diverse forms of clouds in Der Sinn des Wolkenvermessens (Working Title: Wolkenatlas) für Jean-Luc Nancy, from the attempt to draw the constantly changing clouds in the sky, to the characteristic mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb, to the technical exploded-view drawings of machines; or, in the index Vergleichen, the possibilities of comparison, from mathematical formulas, to ethnographic photographs, to the theory of craniometry; or, in Systema, the portrait drawings of the discoverers of chemical elements—in Lektüre und Ablenkung [Reading and Distraction] (2016/2017), it is about the manifold quotidian distractions from reading a book meticulously recorded and continued in their fleetingness.

Vergleichen, 2012–2022

The large-scale index Vergleichen [Compare], consisting of more than 200 parts, is based in its formal structure on the traditional Indian game Moksha Patamu, known in the West as the children’s game Snakes and Ladders. Originally a game of moral, it serves to meditate on the possibility of reaching Nirvana by ascending faster through virtues (ladders) and sinking back with vices (snakes). In addition, the index also reminds us of the game Memory, the goal of which is to compare two pictures and come to the conclusion that they are the same.

In terms of content, the representations show different methods of comparison. For example, the 52 mathematical comparison signs (Equal: =, Greater: >, Unequal: ≠ etc.), over each of which a passe-partout is set, on which the numbers 1–100 are printed in the original Indian notation (०१२३४५६७८९). In addition, the butterflies and beetles known from biology and insect collections, which allow a taxonomic classification, ethnological and cultural illustrations and photographs, with which different cultural, social and religious signs and elements in different ethnic groupings are compared with each other. But also medical illustrations and photographs of genitals and bodies from historical textbooks are included, which Müller contrasts with pornographic images found on the Internet.

Vergleichen is a reference to scientific comparison as a method that became the dominant approach to research in the 19th century. While the original method saw itself as objective, Müller highlights the ethical dimension of the seemingly neutral scientific claim of comparison. Applied to the human being as the object of study, comparison can become a politically and socially effective instrument, as shown, for example, by phrenology, the so-called craniology, or racial studies. Accordingly, Müller integrates into the index, in addition to excerpts from Kleinen Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1920–22) by the race theorist Hans F. K. Günther, of which Adolf Hitler personally owned four devoted editions and which became the ‘scientific’ basis of National Socialist racial ideology, Müller also integrates an illustration into the index from the exhibition catalogue Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art], which shows a realistic portrait next to two expressionist ones by Oskar Kokoschka and suggestively asks: “Which of these three drawings is probably a dilettante work by the inmate of a lunatic asylum? You will be amazed: the one on the upper right! The other two, on the other hand, were once described as masterly prints by Kokoschka.”

Lektüre und Ablenkung, 2016/2017

When an artist dedicates himself to a book, there is a danger that everything that is created becomes an illustration. The artist, espe­cially the draughtsman, translates the text into images, translates it into another language, into the language of the visual, which—although it is governed by other rules and laws, the law of the gaze, of images, of forms—usually expresses the same content as the original text by other means.

Lektüre und Ablenkung [Reading and Distraction] (2016/17) may seem at first glance like the project of a large-format illustration: Drawings of giraffes and chimpanzees, a second monkey holding a razor, a third in excited conversation with a skeleton, collages of pornographic images, ethnographic photographs and anatomical pictures, various portraits, an aeroplane, Donald Trump and clowns, listed numbers from the Ulam sequence, a bank statement and a medical report—all between copies of the pages of Jacques Derrida’s book Vom Geist [Of Spirit].

Everything looks as if Lektüre und Ablenkung is an intensive examination of Derrida’s book with the means of a visual artist. But illustration is not the path Müller has chosen. Much more than reading, Müller is concerned with the distraction from reading: planned and documented distraction. Distraction in Müller’s work is not that which unintentionally attracts the reader’s attention and keeps him from his reading—for example, the wandering of thoughts, noises, movements that push themselves into the periphery of the field of vision. Distraction is the plan in Müller’s work. Every distraction, every thought that intervenes during the act of reading was documented by the artist, put to paper, elaborated on, drawn with patience, worked out, carried on. The distraction was deliberately allowed. Everything else—even the text—is subordinated to the distraction, becomes secondary.

Consequently, it is almost impossible to read the text of Vom Geist when standing in front of the work Lektüre und Ablenkung hanging on the wall, which measures 1.62 by 6.67 meters and consists of 126 acrylic glass frames in the same format; one remains in the constant distance that a work of art dictates to its viewer. One stands in front of a work of art, instead of holding a book in one’s hand, which one can immerse oneself in while sitting in an armchair or concentrated at a desk with lowered gaze.

That which is deliberately made difficult and almost prevented by the composition of the artwork, namely concentrated reading, reading a text from the first to the last page—the pages hang too high or too low, one would have to get down on one’s knees to be able to read the words with a concentrated gaze—loses its significance in the reception of Lektüre und Ablenkung. Instead, the viewer allows himself to be distracted by Müller’s additions: the gaze wanders back and forth, from this drawing to that photograph to this print. Müller’s parts in this work attract the viewer’s attention. They direct the gaze, draw it from right to left, from top to bottom and vice versa; Müller’s captured distractions divert the viewer’s gaze, redirect it, force it to make associative connections between the parts.

Die Buchstaben der Psyche, 1994/2017–2018

The drawings and collages of the 70-part work Die Buchstaben der Psyche [The Letters of the Psyche] were inspired by the ideas of the writer and ethnographer Hubert Fichte. Fichte’s sociologically influenced observations and ethnological studies, which took him to several South American countries, the Caribbean and Africa in the 1970s, are misappropriated for this work and applied to the culture of the “Himmelheber”, a fictitious people who died out a long time ago and are named after their discoverer, the ethnologist Hans Himmelheber. Fichte’s sometimes pseudo-scientific approach is taken ad absurdum in Die Buchstaben der Psyche, which shows us in this way the difficulty of abandoning our Eurocentric view and thus disregarding our evaluation criteria.

Sýstema, 2007

Sýstema, a series consisting of 117 frames with (to a small extent without) drawings, is arranged in an elongated grid on the wall that opens upwards and thereby has “gaps” in its structure. The approximately A3-sized pictures in the narrow wooden frames are drawn head or breast portraits in varying degrees of frontality. They are almost exclusively executed in black and white contrast, built up from differently organised layers of strokes and cross-hatching. 

Obviously an accumulation of portraits heads from quite different temporal and cultural contexts; some of them seem familiar at first glance, but there is no identification by name as in traditional picture cycles, and so one wonders what is the basis of the grouping. One can almost say that the pictures are overflowing with historicity through their style and facture. A historical ambience is created, an extremely suggestive pictorial context, especially in its superficial indeterminacy. 

The title of the work gives a hint—namely that the basic structure of the frames is a correspondence to the classical chemical-physical model of the periodic system. From this quickly follows the second step of identification—that these are the portraits of the historical discoverers of the respective element in the periodic table, each on the place that the discovered element occupies in the systemic structure. The attribution of content-related explanations for the formal differences and peculiarities of the individual parts of the work can be taken so far that clues to the state of aggregation of the respective element (solid, liquid or gaseous) can be read from the different background designs.

Index der Willkür, unvollendet, 2010/2011

The Index der Willkür, unvollendet [Index of Arbitrariness, Incomplete] attempts to organize the process of language development in the case of individuals who work with concepts of conveying content by way of text and language. 95 text panels are placed in chronological order, with a portrait placed below each one. However, as is often the case in systematics, the regularity of the systematization is interrupted. Some of the portraits are abstract, while others are hidden behind tinted glass or are missing entirely. Each text panel, which features a source text by the individual portrayed, the name of the writing system, the initials of the individual and their date of birth, tells its own story of language development: for example, the story of James Dee, who developed a language to communicate with angels, or a poem by John Milton that was the first literary text to be translated into Braille.