Ernstes Spiel - catalogue raisonné - Edition

The first three volumes of Michael Müller’s Catalogue Raisonné "Ernstes Spiel" [Serious Game] have already been published. Each volume is accompanied by an exclusive edition of 20 copies, published by Alien Athena Foundation for Art, which offer a multifaceted look behind the scenes of the artistic creative process. Like the Catalogue Raisonné, which spans from the earliest artistic beginnings and sketches in the 1980s to the present day with large-format paintings, the edition also provides a comprehensive overview of Michael Müller’s entire diverse oeuvre.

Each edition picks up on central themes and media from the corresponding volume of the Catalogue Raisonné and distils a unique work from the various creative periods, artistic means of expression used and thematic focuses. No two copies of an edition are alike; rather, they are characterized by Müller’s individual artistic handwriting. Over the years and from edition to edition, a complex atlas of Michael Müller’s artistic works emerges, which is constantly growing, cannot in principle be finalised as long as the artist is still working, and faces up to the challenge of the open.

Intricately produced and framed in a high-quality acrylic glass frame, the edition shows not only the variety and diversity of the artistic means Müller uses, but also the constants of his oeuvre, of which playing with and analysing and varying systems of order and classification to the limits of what is possible and logical is of particular importance. Thus, as the basis of the entire edition, a grid system can be found in each individual work, which structures both the individual parts and the overall work that emerges from them and is at the same time a frequently recurring motif in Müller’s works.

In this way, the wall-filling complete work that results from the individual editions can be understood in a way as a return to Müller’s work Der Sinn des Wolkenvermessens (Working Title: Wolkenatlas) für Jean-Luc Nancy [The Sense of Measuring Clouds (Working Title: Cloud Atlas) for Jean-Luc Nancy] (2007/2014–21) from the group of works entitled Indexes, which prefigures central elements such as the grid system and the idea of an atlas of multiplicity.