Claudia Müller

Claudia Müller has been working together with her sister Julia since 1991. Claudia & Julia Müller’s installations are in the realm of diverse materials with a particular emphasis on immersive, figurative wall drawings and paintings in combination with objects. Early works such as Encyclopaedia of Friendship outline aspects in an intimate, personal setting. In recent years, the focus of her work has been addressing social issues and contemporary phenomena. In particular, the focus on human relationships in their humanistic and cultural contexts. Psychological studies, ways of life, behaviour, body language, constraints, togetherness and social distance are among the questions that form the basis of her empirical research. Starting from photographs, from images from private and publicly accessible archives, Claudia & Julia Müller reassemble these in drawings and unite them in large-format room paintings with objects made of ceramics, wood, plaster and textiles. In the interplay between the partly large-format pictorial information and the coloured ceramic vessels, lamps, carpets or seating elements, an atmospheric tension is created that can be permanently charged and discharged in various ways.

Claudia & Julia Müller have jointly participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad, including Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds (2019); Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin (2018); Kunstmuseum Basel (2017); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau (2017); Maccarone Gallery, New York (2015); Kunsthaus Zürich (2015); Staatliche Galerie Karlsruhe (2015); Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2014); Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf (2010); MoMA. New York (2009); Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2009); MOCA Miami,(2008); Kunstverein Bonn (2008); De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam (2007); Reina Sofia, Madrid (2004) and Kunsthalle Basel (1997).

Claudia & Julia Muller have been awarded various prizes and grants, including the PS1 international studio residency in New York (1999), the Curatorium of the Canton of Aargau (2017), the Prix Meret Oppenheim (2010) and the Manor Kunstpreis Basel-Stadt (1994).

claudia.mueller@fhnw.ch