Germany
* March 31, 1940 Berlin
Timm Ulrichs who describes himself as a “total artist”, has been working for more than 60 years with wit and a spirit of contradiction on the consistent realization of an absolute fusion of art and life. The central principle of his artistic work is “Art is life, life is art” and culminates in the formula “Total art is life itself”.
For Ulrichs, this principle can no longer be realized with the traditional means of art. The logical conclusion is that he works with almost any material across all artistic disciplines; he is a poet and sculptor, photographer and draftsman, actionist and performer, conceptual and object artist. His work, which includes drawings, texts, sculptures, installations, fluorescent light events and much more, aims to overcome the temporally, locally and culturally limited space of museums and galleries.
Even if Ulrichs’ works often provoke a smile or indignation at first glance, his main concern is not a joke or provocation per se. He is much more concerned with thoroughly shaking up the traditional world of art with its unreflected habits and rituals. Nothing illustrates this better than his appearance at the Cologne art market in 1975, wearing a blindfold, a cane and a sign around his neck that read: “I can no longer see art!”
