Christoph Mueller
*1958, CH

About Christoph Mueller

By Fanny Frey*

Zurich artist Christoph Mueller (1958) works in the fields of painting, graphics, film and music. He lives and works in Switzerland and France. Mueller's artistic career began with an education at the Zurich University of the Arts, which he completed in 1980 with a diploma in visual design and communication.

Throughout his career, Mueller has been honoured for his artistic talent with various prizes and scholarships, including the Kiefer-Hablitzel Art Prize in 1980 and the City of Zurich Art Scholarship in 1986. In the last ten years Christoph Mueller has increasingly returned to painting. He has created several series of works that have been presented in solo exhibitions.

Anyone familiar with Christoph Mueller’s work will know that his exhibitions usually connect to the sites where they take place in one way or another. His exhibition "Inspiraziuns alpinas" in Sedrun featured paintings with mountain scenes, in Cosprons paintings with motifs from the South of France, and now here in Zurich a specific Zurich motif takes centre stage.

The artist is always drawn to nature, he rarely paints people or man-made objects, so it is not surprising that during his visit to the Kunsthaus Zürich he was inspired not by the works of other painters or by architecture, but by the bouquet of flowers that is always at the centre of the Merzbacher collection. This bouquet looks almost like a sculpture, placed on a pedestal and always extremely pompous. From 31 May to 1 June, the exhibition "It could be about flowers" at the Cigarettenfabrik on Zurich's Sihlquai will show a large number of paintings and prints inspired by the bouquet at the Kunsthaus over the past two years. The artist calls the series "At Heimplatz", a subtle reference to the location of the flowers that inspired him.

Mueller's artistic exploration also includes the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into his creative process. On the one hand, he creates motifs for prints, while on the other, AI's suggestions inspire him to develop his paintings and prints in a different direction. The artist photographs his works and transforms them through AI, creating unique pieces that become series of prints or the basis for paintings. Elements from the past, information from the present and imagination combine to create innovative and visually new works of art.

*Fanny Frey

The young curator Fanny Frey studied art history and the theory and history of photography at the University of Zurich and recently completed her Masters in Curatorial Studies at the ZHdK. She worked at the Helmhaus Zurich, where she co-curated several exhibitions. Since February 2024 she has been responsible for art education at Kunstraum Baden and also works as a freelance curator and mediator. She will curate Christoph Mueller's next exhibition "It could be about flowers" in Zurich.

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