Biography

Biography (CV Below)

Christian Philipp Müller is a Berlin-based Swiss conceptual artist whose practice examines a range of issues from social and aesthetic concerns to design, national histories, and the institutional framing of culture. His projects are usually collaborative, interdisciplinary, and site-specific, and he is a leading figure in institutional critique and socially engaged art practices.

In one of his earliest works, Kleiner Führer durch die ehemalige Kurfürstliche Gemäldegalerie Düsseldorf (A Short Guide to the Elector’s Former Painting Gallery, 1986), performed while still a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, he gave daily tours during the annual student exhibition at the Kunstakademie dressed in a guard’s uniform. As a commentary on the loss of Düsseldorf’s cultural identity, Müller’s tours did not actually describe the works on view, but rather, addressed the 17th and 18th century paintings from the collection that had been moved to the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

During a period spent in Brussels from 1988 to 1992, Müller presented his first institutional solo exhibition, Fixed Values (1991), at the Palais de Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Inspired by an auction house annexed to the museum, he presented a museum auction of his own artistic history by putting objects on display from his own previous works.

In 1992, Müller moved to New York and began showing with Colin de Land’s celebrated Soho gallery, American Fine Arts Co. The same year, he was invited along with Andrea Fraser and Gerwald Rockenschaub to represent Austria at the 45th Venice Biennale, to which he contributed Green Border (1993), an intervention consisting of removing the pavilion’s exterior garden wall and replanting its untended underbrush. The gesture functioned as a metaphor for transgressing national borders, a concept that he had also physically enacted through a series of private performances in which he illegally crossed Austria’s “green” borders with neighboring countries.

In 1997, Müller was invited to participate in documenta X, where he presented A Balancing Act (1997), which took as its point of departure Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks and Walter de Maria’s Vertical Earth Kilometer, both presented at previous documentas. Addressing the idea of striking a “balance” between the social and the formal in art, Müller’s work involved a tightrope act in which he paced off the distance between Beuys’s and de Maria’s works dressed as the infamous World Trade Center tightrope walker, Philippe Petit, carrying a six-meter-long balancing pole made half of oak and half of brass in reference to Beuys and de Maria.

In the early 2000s, Müller was invited to install permanent site-specific artworks on the campuses of several New York universities including Hudson Valley Tastemakers (2003-present) on the upstate New York campus of Bard College, and Spice Up Powdermaker (2003-present) located in the School of Social Sciences on the campus of Queens College, New York.

From 2006 to 2008, Müller was a partner in the New York artist-run collaborative gallery, Orchard, which was formed in the wake of Colin de Land’s death and was only intended to last for three years. In 2007, he presented Basics at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, as the subject of his major retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Basel, which coincided with the publication of a monograph on his work published by Hatje Cantz.

In 2008, he was invited to participate in Manifesta 7, where he presented Space Rendezvous, another work reflecting on fraught national and regional identities. Drawing together references as seemingly disparate as the 1975 joint U.S.-Russia space mission, the declining tobacco-manufacturing industry in northern Italy, and an Italian Futurist-inspired parade float design, the piece culminated in a folkloric parade through the town of Rovereto, located in the Alto-Adige region of northern Italy.

In 2012, on the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Haus der Kunst, Munich, Müller was invited to develop an “exhibition dramaturgy” for Histories in Conflict: Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, organized by Okwui Enwezor, for which he created a visual program aimed at disclosing the institution’s history from its Nazi legacy to its appropriation by U.S. military forces after the war. In 2011, Müller moved to Berlin, and from 2011 to 2013 he acted as Dean of the School of Art and Design in Kassel, Germany, where he also taught as Professor of Performative Sculpture from 2013 to 2015.

Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition in Stans, Switzerland (2016), and group exhibitions at the Kestnergesellschaft Hannover (2016) and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2016). He is currently working on a contribution to an exhibition commemorating the 500th anniversary exhibition of Martin Luther in Wittenberg, Germany.

Updated April 2017.

1982–1983

Farbe und Form (F+F), Zurich, Switzerland, Fine Arts

1984–1988

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany, Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Fine Arts, Meisterschüler of Prof. Fritz Schwegler, Tutor for Prof. Kasper König

2011–2013

Dean at the School of Art and Design, Kassel, Germany

2013–2015

Professor for Performative Sculpture, School of Art and Design, Kassel, Germany

2016–2017

Professor of Artistic Concepts/Art and Public Space, Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg, Germany

Solo Exhibitions

2016

Aut Vincere, aut mori, Nidwaldner Museum, Winkelriedhaus, Stans, Switzerland

2014

Umsetzungen, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin, Germany

2013

Ends of the Library, Goethe Institute, New York

2012

Histories in Conflict: Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, 1937–1955. Exhibition dramaturgy, installations, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

2011

2010

Ach wie gut dass keiner weiss, Artelier Contemporary, Graz, Austria

2008

2003

2002

A Taste for Money, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Germany

2001

Humus, Kulturelle Bodenprobe aus Hamburg, Köln und Luzern, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Luzern, Switzerland

2000

A Sense of Place, American Fine Arts, Co., New York

1999

Eine Welt für sich, Ein Projekt rund ums Freihaus in Wien, Freihaus, Vienna

1998

Imagetransfer, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Germany
Some Things Never Change, Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan, Italy
Naturalezas Muertas, Galeria Oliva Arauna, Madrid, Spain
Der Campus als Kunstwerk, Universität Lüneburg, Germany

1997

Was nahe liegt, ist doch so fern, Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany

1996

On Tour, Galerie Christian Nagel, Art Basel, Switzerland

1995

News and Gifts, American Fine Arts, Co., New York

1994

Tour de Suisse, Fri-Art Centre d’Art Contemporain, Fribourg, Switzerland
Showroom (with Mario Airo), Galleria Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy
Interpellations, American Fine Arts, Co., New York
Touring Club, Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg, Germany

1993

Nur auf der Durchreise, Galerie Christian Nagel, Unfair, Cologne, Germany
The Family of Austrians, Galerie Metropol, Vienna, Austria
Stellvertreter, Representatives, Rappresentanti (with Andrea Fraser and Gerwald Rockenschaub), Biennale di Venezia, Austrian pavilion, Italy

1992

1991

Feste Werte, Valeurs Fixes, Vaste Waarden, Fixed Values, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium

1990

1989

Porte bonheur, Maison de la Culture et de la Communication, Saint-Étienne, France

1988

Eh! bien prenons la plume, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1986

1984

Wie ein deutsches Wohnzimmer, Rote Fabrik, F+F, Zurich, Switzerland

Group Exhibitions

2017

Luther and the Avant-Garde, Old Prison, Wittenberg, Germany