Ute Müller
Friday, 28 February 2014
Work from her oeuvre.
“…This body of works – paintings, architectural structures, sculptural references – defines a space where the viewer is immediately captured by the beauty of a painting that has its origins in the history of twentieth century abstraction.
Yet this is only a transitory emphasis, an instant of burning passion later exposed to the artist‘s scrupulous critique, revealing her own tendency to question such tradition.
Catalysts and kingpins of the whole exhibition, the paintings are monochromes at first glance – toning from grey to blue – but slowly unveil different and deeper levels of paint. The sculptural elements purposefully arranged in close proximity to the paintings, suggest the audience different points of view and contribute to define portions of space in which a close relationship between the work and the eye is established – initially estranged, then, intrigued.
The audience is thus confronted with fragmentary processes and discern several „views“ which direct the eye inside an apparently indecipherable pictorial space, like constructivist scaffolds made of guiding lines for the eye.
Müller knows what it means to be inside a tradition. She is perfectly aware of the forms devised by her forerunners, from the Russian Constructivism, one of the first movement to investigate the connection between painting and real life, to the minimal art experiences; but she also knows how to redefine and reconstruct her poetics through a series of slight variations which answer originally the tortuous questions sorrounding the status of painting as art.
Her paintings fluctuate between solidity and instability. Different levels of interpretation can be applied, side by side, independent of one another; they all influence the journey of the audience through the pictorial space. The result is a multi-perspective game in which the imaginary and the real are entwined, in which poetry and narrative are balanced by more physical, pragmatic needs, and where man is still the core of the matter, oscillating between illusion and reality….” – Galeria Collicaligreggi.
vis DUST Magazine.