Image: E.M. Donahue Gallery, New York
Austrian artist Ulrike Müller will present ‘Walkthrough’, her inaugural solo exhibition with Hoffman Donahue, at the gallery’s New York space at 99 Bowery. The site-specific exhibition will open on September 9, 2026, and remain on view through October 24, bringing together Müller’s enamel-on-steel paintings in an installation that traces the conceptual and formal development of her work across 15 years.
Rather than limiting the presentation to the principal exhibition area, the installation will extend through the gallery’s back office and stairwell. The arrangement establishes a physical timeline within the building, positioning Müller’s paintings in relation to the spaces through which visitors move. The New York gallery is located on the second floor and is accessible by stairs.
Drawing is a generative core of Müller’s practice. She begins with colored-pencil sketches, which she translates into paintings made with vitreous enamel: powdered glass fused to steel in a furnace. The resulting compositions are later documented through digital vector diagrams, a process that converts the paintings’ formal structures into a technical vernacular and makes their underlying systems visible in another medium.
‘Walkthrough’ develops an installation strategy Müller previously used at Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany. There, her enamel-on-steel paintings were installed above an extended frieze of vector line drawings wheat-pasted directly onto the gallery walls. Curator Eva Birkenstock described the format as a way of offering “insights into the development of motifs and color constellations, charting formations and repetitions in a visual chronology.” At Hoffman Donahue, Müller will add large forms sponge-painted directly onto the gallery walls.
Murals have become increasingly central to Müller’s exhibitions since 2012, shaping the conditions in which her paintings are encountered. In a statement included with the exhibition announcement, Müller said, “I work a lot with transfers from one format, context, or material to another,” adding that her starting point is “always working with color and form, or, in compositional terms, with figure, ground, and frame.” The gallery-wall paintings therefore function as part of the exhibition’s structure rather than as a separate decorative element.
Born in Austria in 1971, Müller lives and works outside Vienna. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York. Her solo exhibitions have included presentations at Sylvia Kouvali in London, Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Galerie Meyer Kainer in Vienna, Vielmetter in Los Angeles, and the Brooklyn Museum. Her work has also appeared in the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie International, the Whitney Biennial, the New Museum’s ‘Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon’, and ‘Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction’ at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Collections holding her work include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, mumok in Vienna, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. Hoffman Donahue will open the exhibition on September 9 from 6 to 8 p.m.; regular gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
