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Studio Michael Müller

Michael Müller
Ernstes Spiel – Catalogue Raisonné
Edition

Ernstes Spiel – Catalogue Raisonné
Edition

The first three volumes of Michael Müller’s Catalogue Raisonné Ernstes Spiel [Serious Game] have already been published. Each volume is accompanied by an exclusive edition of 20 copies, published by Alien Athena Foundation for Art, which offer a multifaceted look behind the scenes of the artistic creative process. Like the Catalogue Raisonné, which spans from the earliest artistic beginnings and sketches in the 1980s to the present day with large-format paintings, the edition also provides a comprehensive overview of Michael Müller’s entire diverse oeuvre.

Each edition picks up on central themes and media from the corresponding volume of the Catalogue Raisonné and distils a unique work from the various creative periods, artistic means of expression used and thematic focuses. No two copies of an edition are alike; rather, they are characterized by Müller’s individual artistic handwriting. Over the years and from edition to edition, a complex atlas of Michael Müller’s artistic works emerges, which is constantly growing, cannot in principle be finalised as long as the artist is still working, and faces up to the challenge of the open.

Intricately produced and framed in a high-quality acrylic glass frame, the edition shows not only the variety and diversity of the artistic means Müller uses, but also the constants of his oeuvre, of which playing with and analysing and varying systems of order and classification to the limits of what is possible and logical is of particular importance. Thus, as the basis of the entire edition, a grid system can be found in each individual work, which structures both the individual parts and the overall work that emerges from them and is at the same time a frequently recurring motif in Müller’s works.

In this way, the wall-filling complete work that results from the individual editions can be understood in a way as a return to Müller’s work Der Sinn des Wolkenvermessens (Working Title: Wolkenatlas) für Jean-Luc Nancy [The Sense of Measuring Clouds (Working Title: Cloud Atlas) for Jean-Luc Nancy] (2007/2014–21) from the group of works entitled Indexes, which prefigures central elements such as the grid system and the idea of an atlas of multiplicity.

Please scroll down for all editions published so far.

For further information and availability please contact Alien Athena Foundation for Art.
contact@alienathena.org

  • Among the most large-format, complex and sprawling works by Michael Müller are those that he summarises in the group of works known as Indexes. The works from this group often consist of hundreds of pieces, all set in acrylic glass frames in a similarly small, manageable format, they unfold a considerable dimension towards the fully installed work—several metres in height and width.

  • The edition for the catalogue raisonné Ernstes Spiel joins the group of indexes both in terms of content and aesthetics: Each volume of the catalogue raisonné is accompanied by an edition that takes up the central theme of the respective book and gives it a new artistic expression. Each individual edition represents a period of Michael Müller’s work, the use of a specific medium or a group of works. From edition to edition, a kaleidoscopic panorama of Michael Müller’s entire artistic oeuvre up to the present day is created, which unfolds into a wall-filling work of art with complex references, allusions and echoes.

  • The catalogue raisonné will comprise a total of 44 volumes and is being published under the title Ernstes Spiel – Catalogue Raisonné [Serious Game – Catalogue Raisonné] as a cooperation project between the publishers De Gruyter and Deutscher Kunstverlag in close collaboration with the artist and the Alien Athena Foundation for Art.

Ernstes Spiel: Verbinden (Kastor und Polydeukes)

Michael Müller’s first exploration of the ancient mythological narrative of the twin brothers Castor and Polydeuces, the so-called Dioscuri, dates back to 2007, when he created the three-part drawing Castor und Pollux. Durch Liebe sehen [Castor and Pollux. Seeing Through Love]. The inseparable twins—conceived in one night by different fathers as sons of Leda—are torn apart when the mortal Castor dies in battle. The divine Polydeuces begs his father Zeus, who seduced Leda in the form of a swan, to take away his immortality so that he can be reunited with Castor in Hades, the realm of the dead. Touched by the twins’ love, Zeus gives the Dioscuri the opportunity to spend alternate days together in the realm of the dead and on Mount Olympus among the gods—to be born and die every day.

The motif of the drawing created especially for the edition for volume 1.4 (read more about the corresponding volume here) of the catalogue raisonné is taken from Castor und Pollux. Durch Liebe sehen and executed in pencil on paper: An allegory of love and the bond between two so different and at the same time so alike as the mortal/immortal twins, nerve tracts that lead from the eye via the shared heart to the brain, the inseparability of aesthetic vision and intellectual comprehension, emotion and rationality in love.

Ernstes Spiel: Verbinden (Kastor und Polydeukes), 2025
Edition of 20 + 2 AP
Pencil on paper, printed cardboard
Acrylic glass cover
29,0 × 43,0 × 2,5 cm

Published by Alien Athena Foundation for Art
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Ernstes Spiel: Vergleichen (Otto Freundlich)

The sculpture Kopflose (nach Otto Freundlich) [Headless, after Otto Freundlich ](2022) is part of Michael Müller’s group of works Am Abgrund der Bilder [At the Abyss of Images]. The basis for this sculpture was the plaster figure Großer Kopf [Large Head] created in 1912 by the progressive Jewish sculptor Otto Freundlich. This figure was confiscated by the National Socialists as ‘degenerate’ and shown in German-speaking countries as part of the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition tour. As it was also depicted on the cover of the accompanying catalogue, it became one of the best-known works of what the National Socialists called degenerate and, in their eyes, inferior art. The artwork was destroyed during transport from one exhibition venue to the next. Historical photos show that it was replaced by a falsified replica during the exhibition, in which the characteristics of the supposed ‘degeneracy’ were accentuated. This replica has not survived either.

The edition for volume 4.1 (read more about the corresponding volume here) of the catalogue raisonné shows various photographic reproductions of the three versions of the sculpture Großer Kopf side by side: the work by Otto Freundlich, the falsified replica by the Nazis and Müller’s bronze sculpture Kopflose (nach Otto Freundlich). The size of the photographs depends on the size of the respective image file available. While Michael Müller’s sculpture could be professionally photographed, the depiction of Freundlich’s original is based on a historical photograph, and the Nazi replica was copied and reproduced from a newspaper article of the time, the only surviving image.

Ernstes Spiel: Vergleichen (Otto Freundlich), 2024
Edition of 20 + 2 AP
Silver gelatine print, printed cardboard
Acrylic glass cover
89,0 × 43,0 × 2,5 cm

Published by Alien Athena Foundation for Art
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Ernstes Spiel: Verlesen

The index Lektüre und Ablenkung [Reading and Distraction] deals with the inevitable distractions and wanderings of attention that you cannot avoid when reading a book. The feeling that at the end of a page you ask yourself what you have just read, because although you have grasped the words and your eyes have jumped from line to line, your thoughts have fled to a completely different topic. These distractions were documented, noted and elaborated by Müller: from text notes, underlining, critical commentaries to photographic collages, superimpositions of the text, drawings and cut-outs, which stand alongside facsimile copies of the pages of Jacques Derrida’s Of Spirit, his critical examination of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy.

The edition for volume 4.2 (read more about the corresponding volume here) takes up a recurring motif in Lektüre und Ablenkung: the crossing out and blackening of entire passages of text, with the exception of a few words that remain legible. From these at first glance cryptic fragments, multi-layered sentences emerge, which Müller appropriates and condenses into pencilled statements. A revelation of the condition of every reading, that the reader brings something to the text and always reads something subjectively coloured out of it, documenting an interplay between text and reader, author and artist.

Ernstes Spiel: Verlesen, 2025
Edition of 20 + 2 AP
Pencil on paper, printed cardboard
Acrylic glass cover
29,0 × 43,0 × 2,5 cm

Published by Alien Athena Foundation for Art
Inquire