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Thomas Müller, "Watador", 2005

Note from publisher:

The nine prints Thomas and I collaborated on for Volume #4 have a freedom of gesture that belies the months of work that went into the proofing and production. The challenge was to convince as well as teach Thomas that printmaking, although several steps removed from the marks he was making in his studio thousands of miles away, could have the emotion and spontaneity that he was familiar with in his drawings.

Thomas Müller was born in 1959 in Frankfurt, Germany, he lives and works in Stuttgart, Germany.

The following are exerpts from (1.) artist statement from his exhibition at the Drawing Center, New York City, 1995. (2.) a few lines taken from a 1999 book of 30 drawings with text by Stefan Gronert, translation by Johannes Bohmann.

1....."It is not only in relation to the different media that my work moves between different poles: big and small, concentration and dissolution, simplicity and complexity, nervousness and calm. I feel that my work lives especially from these different and contradictory poles. I am not interested in a closed linear system or concept (such closed systems of thought are unjust in light of our complex and immense reality). Rather, my work gathers its energy and vitality from oscillating tension sphere. As a result, my development in recent years has not been linear or rectilinear, but organic and spiraling, from which the individual works make an ever changing, connected network.".....Thomas Müller

2....."Leafing through them slowly and with due attention, we recognize a network of cross-references that seem to make the one answer to the other. Heuristically, this correlation could be described as a kind of familial similarity.... These details emphasize the impression that the work emerged unplanned and incidentally. If one wanted to apply the classical categories of the art of drawing to these observations, one would have to talk of studies. And yet, one does not have the impression that they are unfinished. Rather, it is the case that openness of pictorial structure and completeness of a work are conditions upon which Thomas Müller's drawings rest.....although the drawings do not show any narrative element, there is a nearness to literature that can be clearly sensed.....these are not just exercises or pastimes that can be evaluated on a formal level only. It is true that these drawings "mean" nothing but themselves, yet it is exactly from this identity that their substance grows, as with a portrait that leads the viewer to the essential rather than the superficial character of the person portrayed and so deeper reflection on himself..... Each single drawing appears to be fully defined whilst at the same time opening up a vivid perspective for development. Seeing thereby does not confine itself to the visible alone, but rather finds itself encouraged to activate the energies of an inner eye and of a power of imagination that is not usually asked of us in our everyday lives. Judging from this, these drawings do not end on their paper. By stimulating the creative powers of the beholder they address him as an individual and demand of him - another thing rare in our everyday lives - his creative participation."