Alex Müller

Gallery Cabinet

Haverkampf Leistenschneider is delighted to present a selection of previously unseen works by Alex Müller in our Gallery Cabinet, created between 2014 and 2017 as part of her Davos cycle.

During her studies, Alex Müller engaged deeply with the Expressionists as well as the Pre-Raphaelites. To her—as to most of us—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner first appeared as a painter, a figure oscillating between expressivity, construction, and existential self-questioning. It was only through in-depth research that she discovered his photographic work, particularly the diary-like photographs from Davos, in which landscape, studio, social circle, and her own work coexist with remarkable naturalness.

The presentation “Davos” showcases a selection of works created between 2014 and 2017, the result of an intensive, investigative exploration of Kirchner’s photographic estate. It marks a turning point in Alex Müller’s oeuvre, where biographical, art-historical, and formal questions converge in a particular way. Müller was less interested in the documentary content of the photographs than in their specific atmosphere: the fine tension between movement and stasis, and the quiet, almost fragile presence of a moment held still. In a radical formal decision, the series of small- and medium-format ink works initially concentrated solely on indigo and white. This deliberate self-restraint strips the motifs of narrative overlays and examines space, figure, and atmosphere in their purest essence. Thus, independent pictorial realities emerged—condensations of mood and time, in which Kirchner’s photographs serve merely as a catalyst, not as a template.

This initially monochrome phase of reduction eventually led to a renewed opening toward color, which unfolded during the creative process almost like a liberation. The painterly language sharpened by the indigo works culminated in a new colorism that is to be understood not as a return, but as a transformation. The dialogue with Kirchner remains ever-present in this expanded, contemporary visual language.

For Alex Müller, looking back at art history is neither a retrospective gaze nor a mere homage, but rather an understanding of the past as an active space for thought and imagery: “Precisely in the current situation, it seems essential to me not to quote or pay tribute to the past, but to understand it as an active space for thought and imagery. Our contemporary understanding of art arises from this productive tension between historical experience and present-day positioning. For me, the dialogue with Kirchner is not a retrospective look, but a form of continuation.”