Work Series:
Unter dem Baum, 2020

Michael Müller’s series Unter dem Baum [Under the Tree] (2020–2021) consists of the two large-format diptychs Rhizom [Rhizome] and Erweiterung [Extension], which deal with the recurring theme in Müller’s work of repetition, variation and expansion of motifs and formal compositions. The term rhizome, originally from botany, denoting a branching subterranean root system, was taken up by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and made productive for philosophy as a metaphor for a postmodern model of describing the world, replacing older hierarchical structures represented by a tree metaphor. In the traditional tree model, consisting of taxonomies and classifications, each element is on one (and only one) strictly defined level of order, is subordinate to a higher level and may be superior to one or more elements. There are no cross-connections between elements that jump hierarchical levels, and the multiplicity of elements is reduced to the unity of a single element at the highest hierarchical level, to which all other elements are subordinate. In contrast, the rhizomatic model consists only of cross-connections between separate elements and a multifaceted network of concatenations, intersections, distortions and ruptures is formed that dispenses with hierarchical categorisation and allows diversity and difference to remain.

Müller transfers the principle of the rhizome to painting by allowing different pictorial elements and painterly gestures to appear again and again at different positions and in different techniques and media without placing them in a strict systematic order and categorising them in an evaluative way. Recurring elements can be found as a direct application of paint on canvas, but also on glass or Alu-Dibond, or digitally manipulated as a print on canvas or Alu-Dibond—fragmentary, identical, altered, extended. In Unter dem Baum, the painterly gestures of the work Rhizom, applied to unprimed canvas and glass, reappear as a canvas print in Erweiterung and form the underlying pictorial level to which Müller reacts and extends in the further painterly process—an ongoing experimental process of variation that reveals the multi-layered, often not directly visible connections of artworks.