Christopher Muller: Looking Pictures

FROM THE BOOK

"The 'picture maker,' as the artist occasionally calls himself, endows the everyday objects, which are arranged in loose groupings or rows, with new meanings that can be found as much within as outside the picture. Generic objects become embroiled in dialogic compositions and develop a new semantics oriented primarily to the compositional principles of paintings and sculpture. The concreteness of the everyday is translated into an abstract order that emphasizes general structure over individual detail. However, the formal analogies and comparisons that distinguish Muller's still lifes ultimately sensitive the viewer to the equalities peculiar to the individual objects.
The objects are nudged towards abstraction and occasionally veer into the surreal. As in a classical still life, Muller's arrangements suggest symbolically charged allegories which, in turn, are frequently undermined using irony. The object itself becomes a signifier that points beyond itself. Nevertheless. The pronounced formal character of the early still life resembles the innumerable variations of bottles and pots that Giorgio Morandi repeatedly rearranged in his studio and then explored on canvas in subtle tones and hues.

Magdalena Kröner, excerpted from Reading the Picture in Looking Pictures.