Timm Ulrichs

"Me, always me"

Self-portraits and self-portraits

21 November 2004 to 20 February 2005

Introduction by Michael Stoeber and Timm Ulrichs.
Talk with Timm Ulrichs on Tuesday, 18 January 2005.

An exhibition presenting Timm Ulrichs' work strand "Totalfilmkartei". 

The Films 

Journey to the Centre of the Ego 1995/97. Review: Through the Ego. /
An endoscopic journey 1971/2004. /
Forehead and stars 1986/91/2003. /
Meta-breath. On Inspiration and Expiration 1976/99. /
Shot and counter-shot. A Directions 1970/93. /
Knife-throwing portrait 1978/91. /
Olympic marathon treadmill 1972. /
The End 1966/70/81/90/97.

Timm Ulrichs, who places his body at the centre of his work, understands the eye as a reproduction of the camera. Through the eyes, a life from birth to death is filmed continuously and without interruption. The duration of the film and the life of the film hero are identical. "I" is for Timm Ulrich's function, not substance.

In his 2nd Egocentric Manifesto (first publication: april 1966) it says under I and II:
I AM AS ART FIGURE or: what the whole theatre is supposed to do
I art is what I am!
II My expressions of life = my expressions of art:     
art are my views: painting     
art are my body forms: plastic     
art are my movements: dance     
art are my sounds: music     
art are my words: poetry     
art is my life: all theatre the purest theatre nothing but theatre
(first living work of art / total art business)

With Timm Ulrichs, born in Berlin in 1940 and living in Hanover, one of the most important contemporary German artists is exhibiting in Neuenhaus. In 1980 Timm Ulrichs received the art prize of the city of Nordhorn. Since then, the works "Denkmal für Normal Null II" and the "Findling", the most published work by Ulrichs, have been part of today's 'kunstwegen'.
"Since his spectacular and extravagant appearances and beginnings in the 1960s, Timm Ulrichs has been regarded as a kind of early "Ich-AG" in the field of art, as a first-person artist who, in a constructive or even ironic sense, has always made himself the measure of all things in his art or made himself the main protagonist of his actions and performances. The studied architect often acts like an architect himself when realizing his work: Ideas and planning come from him, and he delegates the respective implementation to experts. What is important to Ulrichs in the actual work of art is not his own handwriting or execution, but the idea and the will to design.
Many of the ideas of the presented films date back to the 60s and 70s - but their execution was sometimes only possible due to the development of cinematic possibilities and means in the recent past. "Curious about unpredictable insights and unexpected experiences on my own body, I have often already set out on expeditions into my own self, to descend into the underground and mines of myself, my self," he writes about his work in Neuenhaus. The films are burned on DVD and shown on TV or projected onto the gallery walls. Here the visitor encounters a highly aesthetic cinema of a thoroughly universal self-discovery and questioning. ….
With the digital 3-D visualization "Journey to the center of the ego" (1995/97) Ulrichs wanted to get to the lowest point of his head. Starting with a magnetic resonance tomography image, the image of his head is removed layer by layer and reduced in size in the eight-minute black-and-white video by rotation, until only a core remains at the end - the impression is created of a journey through time, which associatively reminds one of a tribal-historical regression of man to his origins.

The Super 8 film "Olympic Marathon Treadmill" shown on video was made as early as 1972 for the Munich Games. What today flickers across the screen as a three-minute loop was hard work for the artist at the time: treading in place, Ulrichs completed the 42-kilometer marathon distance in a large wheel cage every day. This feat of strength, which is deliberately intended to remind us of golden hamsters in their running wheels, not only made the athletes' efforts absurd, it also called life itself into question as a Sisyphean task.

Becoming and passing away, existential origins and processes, the transition from the microcosm of man to the macrocosm of the universe is illustrated by Ulrich in the impressive four-minute video "Stirn und Gestirne" (1986/91/2003). ... Ulrichs poses the moving question of the last image that a human being has before his or her death in the six-minute video "The End" (1966/70/81/90/97). In the film "Messerwurf-Porträt" (1978/91), as a target for a knife thrower, he has his body outline "traced" on a throwing wall with many knives.
The science fiction film "The Fantastic Journey" inspired Ulrichs to create his extraordinary endoscopic "Durchsicht durchs Ich". For this "introspective-autobiographical film", the artist swallowed an encapsulated micro-camera which took its way through the digestive tract and documented it as a video. Ulrichs had the idea for this as early as 1971; the 86-minute color film was not realized until 2004. The capsule endoscopic procedure, which is used in medicine for diagnostic purposes, has only been around for a few years. …. Ulrichs says: "The deeper we penetrate into ourselves, the more we immerse ourselves in our physical and mental state, the more abysmal, bottomless, eerie and alienating we appear to ourselves and we recognize what we are: "Foreign body." Also on show are the films "Schuss und Gegenschuss" from 1970/93 (a very personal description of how to get from the studio in Sodenstraße to the Sprengel-Museum at Kurt-Schwitters-Platz in Hanover) and "Meta Atem: Über Inspiration und Exspiration" from 1976/99 ... "
(Excerpts from: Thomas Kriegisch, Grafschafter Nachrichten, 23.11.2004)

A cassette with eight film and video works has been published for the exhibition under the title "Timm Ulrichs - Ich, immer ich".

The exhibition was supported by the State of Lower Saxony, the County of Grafschaft Bentheim, the Lower Saxony Lotto Foundation and the City of Neuenhaus.

Timm Ulrichs will receive the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2020 on 23.01.2020.

https://www.art-in-berlin.de/incbmeld.php?id=5278