The answer is Uwe
In front of an audience, Ulay goes in search of his identity in his subconscious. An eyewitness report on Ulay’s performance.
The artist radically merges his own life with art and constantly creates new identities with his artistic concept of transformation
The artist radically merges his own life with art and constantly creates new identities with his artistic concept of transformation
On show are both new works and performances, devised by the artist specifically for this exhibition, as well as numerous works of art, which he held back for years and which are now on view publicly for the first time
On show are both new works and performances, devised by the artist specifically for this exhibition, as well as numerous works of art, which he held back for years and which are now on view publicly for the first time
Performance is a non-material, action-based art form in which the artist working with his/her own body plays an important role and the reactions of the spectators constitute part of the piece of art. It is time-based and site-specific and is therefore transient.
He describes himself self-deprecatingly, as the “most famous unknown artist”: Frank Uwe Laysiepen aka Ulay (*1943). Ulay radically merges his own life with art. With his artistic concept of transformation, he constantly creates new identities. His preferred medium is photography. Initially, in form of Polaroid, photography became an integral part of his artistic practice with its earliest results from 1970. The instant camera picture, which has now been replaced by the digital image, represents for Ulay the material in his long search for the representation of life. His body still today serves as the object of his research, where various influences leave traces and can be read, just like on a canvas. SCHIRN presents the first ever major survey exhibition by this exceptional artist. In addition to numerous individual actions of performative photography and body art, Ulay has realized many projects with other artists or has been influenced by them: Through the friendship with Jürgen Klauke he discovered separately the problem of identity and invented so called performative photography; with his muse Paula Françoise-Piso he created photographic series, in which he intensified self-analysis until its complete dissolution; with his former partner Marina Abramović he eventually gained an extension of performance art that belongs to the most influential activities in that genre till today. The exhibition at SCHIRN brings together Ulay’s remarkable oeuvre in a comprehensive way. On show are both new works and performances, devised by the artist specifically for this exhibition, as well as numerous works of art, which he held back for years and which are now on view publicly for the first time.
Edited by Matthias Ulrich. Foreword by Philipp Demandt. Essays by Matthias Ulrich, Maria Bojan, Noah Charney, Raimar Stange, Dominik Johnson, Amelia Jones, Natalie Storelli, Rudolf Frieling, Lyle Rexer, Beate Söntgen, Sophie Duplaix, Thomas McEvilley and Vito Acconci. As well as an interview with Ulay. German/English edition, 288 pages, approx. 250 illustrations, Spector Books, Leipzig, 2016, price: 35 € (SCHIRN pay desk), 45 € (bookstores)
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In front of an audience, Ulay goes in search of his identity in his subconscious. An eyewitness report on Ulay’s performance.
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