Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in the UK of German artist Thomas Müller. The show will feature a drawing installation in the upstairs gallery, several series of recent smaller drawings and includes 3 stunning large-scale works on paper.
Thomas Müller has been dedicated to the medium of drawing since mid 90ties and has become one of the most prolific artists for that medium in Germany.
His drawings range from nature-like organic shapes to simple gestures or geometrical forms, they venture out into many directions referencing the abstract and the figurative. Müller’ s practice defies any categorisation and routine and the use of various media such as pencil, crayon, chalk, ink, ballpoint pen and oil paint emphasize the constant explorative streak in his oeuvre.
Beautifully flowing dense wave compositions and gestural single line drawings coexist next to grid drawings, some in dense black crayon, others with open oddly twisted lines of thick green oil paint.
However, structures and motifs reappear, quotations form earlier drawings resurface as fragments in a never-ending discourse.
The communication amongst the drawings, the links and lyrical interactions are reinforced by a peculiar installment method that Müller has established already a few years ago.
In London most of the upstairs gallery will be covered floor to ceiling in rows of A4 drawings, that Müller has hung in open and broken groupings of always the same distance. The group arrangement strengthens the connections and reveals new aspects amongst the works transforming it into a mülleresque microcosm.
“Attraction and repulsion, breathing in and breathing out, vigor and laxity are poles between which my work oscillates. I see them less as a linear development than a spiral movement … I get the feeling that my work generates its energy and vitality precisely from these polarities and tensions”.
Thomas Müller studied painting and drawing at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Stuttgart as well as German literature at the university of Stuttgart. He had museum exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland and the US. His drawings are collected internationally and form part of such prominent collections as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Kunstmuseum Bonn and Stuttgart and the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin.
Thomas Müller lives and works in Stuttgart.