MICHAEL MÜLLER: THE GIVEN DAY. CASTOR & POLYDEUCES

From 14 October 2022 to 19 February 2023 the Städel Museum is presenting a solo exhibition by German-British artist Michael Anthony Müller (born 1970). In three exhibition sections, the artist takes visitors into the mythological world of Ancient Greece with an expansive installation, drawings, paintings, and a sculpture. The piece The Given Day (2021–2022), based on the Ancient Greek myth of the Dioscuri, the twins Castor and Polydeuces, form the heart of the exhibition. In battle, the inseparable brothers are divided by the death of Castor, a mortal. Zeus grants the two brothers a shared life – a life between the worlds. Henceforth the brothers alternate between a day spent in Hades, the realm of the dead, and a day on Olympus amongst the gods. A prologue consisting of Müller’s drawings and a sculpture interacts with works on paper from the Städel Museum collection to familiarize visitors with the myth. With his site-specific piece The Given Day, Müller also has different concepts of time enter into dialogue: Firstly, there is the physical notion of time, which allows for a subdivision of time segments into objective units; secondly, there is human-existential time, which evades such a strict subdivision.