As an object of physical representation, mirrors have been of great cultural and art historical significance for centuries : from self-contemplation, the image of the soul, to the motif of transience or the transitions of real worlds into magical parallel universes. They allow a variety of imaginary reflections. As a metaphor of reflection, the mirror expands the view of self-knowledge and self-contemplation. Sali Muller uses the mirrors as a starting point for her artistic practice in order to "refract" them, break them or fragment them. The unfinished forms, which she simply leaves standing or lying, are one of her artistic peculiarities and recurrent patterns with which she gives us thinking tasks. An example of this is her multi-part work The Missing Part (2017). Like enigmatic traces or signs, the objects challenge us either to put them together again, to rearrange them or to re-think them. The otherwise narcissistic mirror image and the recognisable space is disturbed or disappears. The view of oneself is reflected only in fragments. The result is an ambivalent perception experiment, alternating between real, virtual or almost surreal images of inside and outside, of moods and states in which past, present and future are reflected.
Harald F. Theiss
Die Fragmentierung des Spiegelbilds, beziehungsweise die Verunmöglichung des Sich-Spiegelns, ist ein Schlüsselthema, das Sali Muller innerhalb der Arbeit The missing part behandelt. Indem sie jeweils den Mittelteil von nebeneinander platzierten Spiegeln entfernt, lässt sie die Betrachter auf eine Spiegelung blicken, die paradoxerweise gar nicht vorhanden ist. Durch einen harten Schnitt sind Körper und Gesicht aus dem Blickfeld ausgeschnitten und es werden allein Teile des Kopfes und der Füße gespiegelt.
La décomposition de l’image renvoyée par le miroir ou, plutôt, l’impossibilité d’y saisir un reflet de soi est, pour Sali Muller, une question fondamentale, qu’elle aborde dans The missing part. Les miroirs placés côte à côte, privés de leur partie centrale, obligent les visiteurs à contempler un reflet qui, paradoxalement, n’existe pas. Une coupure nette dérobe visage et corps au regard et seule une partie de la tête et des pieds est restituée.
Fragmentation and the impossibility of reflection is a key theme taken up in the installation The missing part. By removing the middle body or other parts of the mirrors, the viewers are left to gaze into a reflection that is paradoxically missing – only their feet and maybe part of their head remain visible, while the rest of the body and face are cut out in a violent slash.