Artist: Thomas Müller

Patrick Heide Contemporary Art presents Metaxy, Thomas Müller's fifth show at the gallery.

Working amongst opposing forces has always been a constant in Thomas Müller’s practice: between simplicity and complexity, between calm and agitation, fullness and void, and between the rational and the emotional. Müller’s ongoing concern with the intermediary resonates in the exhibition title-giving notion of Metaxy, a Greek word translating as “between” or “in the middle”. In Platonic philosophy, Metaxy represents the “in-between” or the “middle ground” of human existence, especially its position between the mortal and the divine, or the material and the transcendental. The latter, in particular, plays a defining role in Müller’s oeuvre, as he applies his various media to paper while emulating the organic makeup of our planet and its cosmic energies.

Müller himself describes this state of “in-between” as a condition of being suspended within different fields of tension. His ever-expanding drawing oeuvre derives from an evolving active state, shaped by the balancing of and the oscillation between many different opposites.

This equilibrating condition manifests itself across Müller’s body of work and within individual pieces. Simple, reduced compositions exist alongside dense, multilayered structures; monochrome palettes contrast with the emergence of more vibrant hues; intimate formats coexist with larger, more expansive works.

The small-scale A4 works have for decades been hung in open grids, thus entering into a dialogue of opposites and gradations. The climax of this ongoing conversation was Müller’s installation of 89 small-scale drawings in one space for the Kubus. Sparda Art Prize for drawing at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart in 2024.

To mediate between the growing range of the A4 and the rather large format drawings, Müller has only recently introduced a new medium-sized format, which multiplies the possibilities of exchange.

Many of the larger format compositions often embody explicit formal gestures or colours as forceful statements on their own right, to then occasionally be overdrawn or counterbalanced by opposing structures or gestures.

The smaller scale drawings usually inspire the motifs of the larger formats and extend the vocabulary into new directions. In Metaxy, for example, PH661 combines two distinct techniques: expressive mark making with a precise, controlled pencil drawing. Fine linear structures in bronze obscure and reveal the underlying purple ink layer, creating a dynamic interplay in which depth and surface continuously shift.

A lighter sense of suspense unfolds in PH671, where six shapes in a vibrant green, new to Müller’s palette, float on the paper, calmly creating tension amongst themselves. Or PH673, where an olive-green line in oil rises from the lower left to the top, surrounded by two opposing triangles in diluted acrylic and crayon, while a cloud of grey gouache hovers at the tip of one. The different media, texture and colour quietly activate the composition to form a structure that oscillates between connection and separation, between stability and flux – an intricately charged microcosm embedded in Müller’s overall state of “Metaxy.”