Zürich (ZH)
Hanna-Karina Müller (HKM) is a Swiss-based artist with Japanese and German roots. Her practice centers on intuitive abstract painting and the translation of internal and relational emotional states into visual form. Working primarily with acrylic paint and textured surfaces, she creates layered compositions that explore the relationship between structure and spontaneity, control and release. Her works develop through an intuitive process in which forms, marks, and movements emerge in response to both inner states and the perception of the surrounding. Over time, individual works often develop relationships to one another through atmosphere, rhythm, and energy, forming interconnected bodies of work. She is co-founder of the studio space “Tomo Creatives” in Zurich. Her practice continues to evolve across painting and collaborative formats, with a growing interest in spatial and installation-based approaches.
My work begins intuitively, often from an emotion, a word, or an internal state. I am interested in how these pre-verbal conditions, shaped by both personal experience and human connection, can be translated into painting through color, texture, and form.
Working primarily with acrylic paint and textured surfaces, I build layered compositions in which structure and spontaneity coexist. Spirals, lines, floral abstractions, words, and recurring marks appear throughout my work, not as fixed symbols, but as evolving responses to inner movements, lived experiences, and the presence of others.
I rarely begin with a predetermined outcome. I work through the painting process itself, making decisions as the work unfolds. Over time, I recognize relationships between works I have created. They connect through atmosphere, rhythm, or energy rather than subject matter.
Influenced by both European and Japanese sensibilities, I am drawn to contrasts such as density and emptiness, stillness and intensity, softness and force. Through layering, interruption, and material tension, I explore how these states can coexist on the surface of the work.
My practice is an ongoing attempt to translate inner and relational experiences into form, reflecting on human connection and the fluid nature of individual identity, while creating spaces that hold emotion without fixing it into a single interpretation.