Wolfgang Muller and Nan Goldin at Zwinger - Berlin, Germany - Review of Exhibitions

Art in America, Jan, 1995 by Brigitte Werneburg

During the summer and early fall there appeared in one of Germany's national daily newspapers a seven-part series of articles filled with unusual facts about lceland. The reader learned, for example, that the most widely used European map of the country misspells the English name as "Island" and in quadrant O-6 scrambles the localities. And that perplexed Icelandic linguists are seeking to explain why their language has two distinct names for the blue tit--a bird not actually found on the island.

Although it was never made clear to the reader, these articles, which appeared under the byline of Berlin artist Wolfgang Muller, were part of an odd work in progress that recently culminated in the exhibition "Blue Tit" at Zwinger. Early in the year, a spurious report in the same newspaper (planted by a friendly editor) had hinted that Muller was guilty of bird-murder, giving the artist the pretext to loudly declare his innocence in a subsequent story. Further published installments included Muller's own interviews with a bird-food manufacturer and a bird taxidermist; there was also a conversation with Muller's sometime collaborator Nan Goldin about the confusing fact that the blue tit is a bird whose breast is distinctly yellow.

Muller's project finally took him on a journey to lceland itself, to obtain the kind of stones known in Nordic legend as Elfenstein (elf's stone)--round flint stones about 1 foot in diameter that have been rubbed smooth by river currents. An expert Icelandic carver was engaged to saw through seven of these stones; the exposed surfaces were polished and Muller's spare drawing of a blue tit was cut into them. The birds' breasts were then etched in gold.

At Zwinger, Muller exhibited these sculptures as well as the newspaper articles and a series of capricious letters of inquiry he had sent to various Icelandic institutions. Thanks to his laughably slight drawings, the sculptures have a reassuringly everyday quality, yet at the same time they do suggest something of the numinous realm of sprites and gnomes from which Elfenstein is thought to spring. Helping to ward off any suspicion of runic kitsch were five of Goldin's color photographs, also included in the exhibition. They show Muller's apartment abuzz with stuffed birds and confirm the blue tit's status as a kind of fetish object for him.

The 36-year-old Muller is one of the wittiest German artists of his generation. From 1980 to '87, along with Kathe Kruse and Niklaus Utermohlen, he was part of the group Die todliche Doris (Deadly Doris), one of the most popular and inscrutable of the Berlin cultural phenomena of the past decade. Die todliche Doris made experimental rock records and gave concerts, touring Eastern Europe and Japan; they created fashion designs; in 1987 they took part as painters in Documenta 8 and as filmmakers in the MOMA exhibition "Berlinart." The remains of Die todliche Doris could be seen in a recent exhibition on artist groups of the '80s, where bottles of a white burgundy bearing the group's name were displayed. Muller had had the wine made in southwest Germany, at a vineyard appropriately called Schweigen (silence).