Harald F. Müller’s works are always both events and provocations. They are events for the eyes and provocations for the mind. Müller is not interested in categories, preferring to operate in the space between them.

His works move between surface and space, image reproduction and color conception, painting and architecture. Müller is on the move, traveling and living with his eyes open for details, joyfully and enthusiastically drawing on the overflowing pool of images and colors of our time. He processes old and new, sophisticated and banal images. He is aware of the power of images, the qualities of centuries-old colors, and the latest possibilities in pigment processing. Müller’s view is radically contemporary and becomes freer with each exhibition. By consistently withdrawing his work from any hasty rationality, he also counters the one-dimensional downgrading and degeneration of humans to homo economicus. What is depicted may remain incomprehensible—beyond all utility. This is precisely where the works gain their relevance.

Müller has at least two collections that are indispensable for his work: his found photographic images and his endless palette of colors. In his studio, there is a “color room” where he has collected over nine hundred pigments, and three other rooms full of boxes in which he stores his found images. Müller moves through the world and hunts with impressive accuracy. His latest series of images, ‘SAS’, has an unbearably provocative motif as its starting point: a scantily clad woman, preferably blonde, holding a weapon, preferably a submachine gun. What has proven itself millions of times over as the cover of Gerard de Villiers’ crime series ‘SAS’ and thus become common sense in popular entertainment does not necessarily have to be lost to high culture.

In Friedrichshafen, one of these ‘SAS’ images marks the entrance to ‘Maler und Modell’ (Painter and Model) – a title that inspires the imagination. One associates the image of a seductive woman, alone with a male model, who is either a painter or a model. In Friedrichshafen, one of these “SAS” images marks the entrance to “Painter and Model”—a title that fires the imagination. One associates the image with a seductive woman who is alone with the painter in his studio: as a muse who inspires him. One of the great topoi of Western pictorial history, beginning with Appelles and Campasne, is continued in magnificent pictorial inventions by Titian or Raphael, from Vermeer

or Courbet to Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and even Koons; and now Harald F. Müller—for him, too, one motif among many. You don’t know what to expect: certainly pictures, certainly colors, and certainly a declaration of love for painting —just in a different way.

Curated by Jörg van den Berg