In 1999, when Josef Felix Müller, after months of work, was about to complete his first large-format painting of the «Alpen»-series, sociologist Peter Glotz published his essay «The Accelerated Society». In this paper the St. Gallen University professor interpreted the process of acceleration as a «fundamental tendency». In opposition to this development, Müller choose a style of working that is either economically extremely wasteful, or, on the contrary, one which concentrates time into a pictorial formula, making it available as a reserve. Thus the artist joins the ranks of those forming a backlash to Glotz's stance. The voluntary abdication of accelerated efficiency becomes an artistic attitude, a self-sought, isolated basis for artistic research.
Unlike the «Alpen»-series, where the paintings are based on photographs taken from books, the source images for the «Wald»- and «Quellen»-series were generated using digital photography.
Müller records a moment, a spirit of light, on his field trips in the forest («Wald») or on a path to a spring («Quelle»). Having only cursorily checked the images upon snapping them, in his studio the artist translates a small-format print-out into a large-format painting. Digital technology creates new challenges for the painter with the immediate visibility of the captured image, the exaggerated luminance of the display or its fundamental translation into numeric codes, which effects the camera's interpretation of the view. Those bright and high-contrast hues engender a new aesthetic. In their brilliant colours, the recent paintings of Josef Felix Müller are comparable to projected images or those on a monitor. Accordingly, this show confines itself to presenting only a few works. The number of paintings suggests more a video than a painting exhibition.
With the benevolent support of the Stiftung Ostschweizer Kunstschaffen.