"Who is Dave Muller and what is he doing in Mia's Gallery," by Tim Gihring, Editor,
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Exhibition Review, December 13, 2016

Dave Muller owns a lot of records. He assembled the soundtrack to his life many years ago—a roomful of records filed alphabetically—and he keeps supplementing it. (“The A’s start here,” he said on a tour of the shelves, then walked down the hall a bit. “The Beatles start about here.”) For a brief period in the pre-digital era, he spent several thousand dollars a month on music.

On a Tuesday morning in a third-floor gallery at Mia (Minneapolis Institute of Art), Muller is listening to vintage calypso, among other genres, playing from a laptop. Upbeat. Playful. A little exotic on a five-degree day. “I like being idiosyncratic, but I would rather not be super-obtuse,” he told T magazine, the New York Times’ style supplement, last year. “I think it’s easy for artists who get caught up in their own sort of deal to lose track of things.”

For the next couple of weeks, Muller’s soundtrack is Mia’s, as he works in public view to transform the museum’s contemporary art galleries according to his idiosyncratic vision. He’s painting the walls with vivid murals. And after sifting through Mia’s collection, mostly in storage, he’s beginning to hang art. A ’60s-style smiley face (a few years ago, he reproduced the iconic button in a show examining the decade of the Beatles’ rise to fame) faces a wall of masks from cultures across the world. A pair of headphones floats near the ceiling. Chuck Close’s Frank painting, a regular in Mia’s galleries, sits on a dolly for re-installation, as though going on vacation.

The exhibition, called "Now Where Were We?" will be fully revealed at the end of December and stay up for a year. Mia’s contemporary art curator, Gabe Ritter, brought Muller in with the idea of bending the rules, questioning museums’ traditional display of art—the white walls, the arrangement by time and place. Instead, Muller was asked to channel universal themes, the people, places, and things that define us.

Muller has sometimes been called an appropriation artist, incorporating and re-imagining the creative work of others. He became known for his Top 10 lists, a series of gorgeous watercolor paintings depicting favorite records (one features the picks of President Obama). But unlike the more controversial and direct appropriations of, say, Richard Prince, Muller’s approach comes across as selfless and egalitarian. For years, he’s hosted (and DJ’ed) brief and lively exhibitions of other artists’ work, called "Three Day Weekends." In 2009, he was happy to create a mural behind a concession stand for the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium, a whimsical diagram of the solar system. The mural, he noted, would be seen “by more people in one week than all the other work I’ve ever shown combined.”

It’s an approach that syncs with this commission. This is Mia’s art, after all. Muller is sampling it, dubbing it into a larger theme, letting it play the way he hears it in his head.

Dave Muller (born 1964) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Muller attended the School of Visual Arts, Fine Arts Graduate Program, New York, NY in 1991, received a Bachelor of Arts and Science degree in 1991 from University of California Davis, Davis, CA and received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1993 from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.

Muller has had domestic and internaitonal exhibitions at The Approach, London, UK; Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL; Basement Gallery, UC Davis, Davis, CA; Blum & Poe, Tokyo, Japan; Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Ft. Myers, FL; Broad Studio #2, Cal Arts D301, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Christian Stein, Milan, Italy; Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, NY; D300 Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Elk Camp, Snowmass, Apsen, CO; Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Vienna, Austria; Four Walls, San Francisco, CA; Galleria Allesandra Bonomo, Rome, Italy; Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Mint Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Murray Guy, New York, NY; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain; Oblong Salon, Davis, CA; Side Street Projects 11th Annual Phantom Ball, Pasadena, CA; Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MI; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Spanish Box, Santa Barbara, CA; Studio 246, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles, CA; and The Wrong Gallery, New York, NY.

Selected public collections include Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; New School University, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Dave Muller (born 1964) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Muller attended the School of Visual Arts, Fine Arts Graduate Program, New York, NY in 1991, received a Bachelor of Arts and Science degree in 1991 from University of California Davis, Davis, CA and received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1993 from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.

Muller has had domestic and internaitonal exhibitions at The Approach, London, UK; Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Armand Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL; Basement Gallery, UC Davis, Davis, CA; Blum & Poe, Tokyo, Japan; Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Ft. Myers, FL; Broad Studio #2, Cal Arts D301, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Christian Stein, Milan, Italy; Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, NY; D300 Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Elk Camp, Snowmass, Apsen, CO; Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Vienna, Austria; Four Walls, San Francisco, CA; Galleria Allesandra Bonomo, Rome, Italy; Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Mint Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA; Murray Guy, New York, NY; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain; Oblong Salon, Davis, CA; Side Street Projects 11th Annual Phantom Ball, Pasadena, CA; Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MI; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Spanish Box, Santa Barbara, CA; Studio 246, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles, CA; and The Wrong Gallery, New York, NY.

Selected public collections include Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; New School University, New York, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.