Christopher Muller: Easy Tools

Christopher Muller, who has held a chair in fine art photography at Folkwang University since 2009, has been one of the most unusual protagonists of the photography scene in the Rhineland since the mid/late 1990s. Having been awarded art prizes, for instance, by the Kunstfonds Bonn in 1995 and the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation in 2004, the artist, who grew up in London, trained at Camberwell College of Arts & Craft and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and finally graduated from the Kunstakademie in Due sseldorf, made his mark on the scene. He has always had a different approach from that of his colleagues. His background is in still life, and it was precisely within this field that he caused a sensation in the 1990s with his serial-like photographs of objects. His recent series of photographic collages, as well as his noticeably expanding use of watercolor techniques, address the relationship between things just as much as our view of them. The images clearly show that the viewers are involved in a complex web of feelings, likes and dislikes, which are in turn also determined by their expectations and actions in everyday life.