TIMM ULRICHS

In the early 1960s Timm Ulrichs defined himself as a total artist. He is one of the most important conceptual artists to have come out of Germany and has made a significant mark on all fields of the genre. The relationship between the self and the world is a recurring theme throughout his oeuvre. In the two-channel video work “Meta-Atem: Über Inspiration und Exspiration,” Ulrichs simply and convincingly shows how life is a process of dissipation. Ulrichs breathes on the screen, fogging it up and extinguishing the image of his face, a playful metaphor of the long-term process that exhausts the body until it disappears. For Ulrichs, the ego is always at the center as a pars pro toto, and he never loses sight of the whole. In his work “Stirn und Gestirne” (Forehead and Stars), a rubber strip with markings on one side is wound from one reel to another. In the process, the artist’s profile dissolves and turns into a sky full of stars. It is a poetic image for the transition from microcosm to macrocosm.

artist’s biography