Ulrike Müller

In her artistic work, Ulrike Müller (born 1971 in Brixlegg, Tirol, lives in New York) explores the relationships between abstraction and bodies and a concept of painting that is not restricted to brush and canvas. The geometrical figures and color surfaces in her compositions are never “purely” abstract. They carry erotic and sexual associations; they tease, touch, and penetrate each other without collapsing into binary logic. Müller uses abstraction as an idiom that can be figuratively appropriated, emotionally charged and politically connoted—depending on the context and the viewer. “My paintings are part of the desire to imagine and to practice alternatives to traditional gender roles and lifestyles,” Müller says.
Müller’s solo exhibition at mumok shows a painterly practice not defined by technique but deliberately seeking out mediums and formats to create connections with other realms of life and of production. Müller uses enamel, for example, which was historically employed in commercial sign making and in jewelry. She has also translated her designs into textile objects like quilts and carpets. A selection of works covering a range of mediums is included in this exhibition, as well as new works that Müller has created especially for the show.

Always, Always, Others. Non-Classical Forays into Modernism

Parallel to and in conjunction with Müller’s solo show, the artist and mumok curator Manuela Ammer are presenting a new selection of works of classical modernism from the mumok collection. Based on Müller’s interest in images of the body and concepts of identity in alternative artistic practices in the 1960s and 1970s, this exhibition will consider the contemporary potential of the formal canon of classical modernism. A juxtaposition of major works from the mumok collection with rarely seen works will shed new light on the relationships between abstraction and figuration and the canonical and non-canonical.