The model of lamp that Müller selected for the work involves a further level of self-reference. It is not just any old table lamp but the Tolomeo Tavolo designer lamp by Michele De Lucchi, named after the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, who postulated that the sun orbited the earth. Who orbits whom here? In a manner both subtle and ironic, Müller’s work takes as its subject the critique of the disinterestedness of art, or of an art that is self-referential. But rather than employ an everyday object as in Duchamp‘s readymades (for instance the urinal), Müller has chosen two top grade designer lamps and positioned them minutely in the exhibition space and with respect to each other. The sculpture (or installation?) is more a kind of art-historical adaptation that transforms what has already been upgraded as a cultural object into art. Revaluation supplants upvaluation and is made to serve a humorous, elegant end. Duality, opposition, or mirroring in Müller‘s works often result in a cancelling out of content, yet they can still be read as sense amid an absence of sense, a cyclical and philosophical angle on the world.

Auto Digital print 1993 / 2010

Lamp that illuminates an illuminating Lamp 1999 / 2006