With a solo exhibition by Wolfram Ullrich (Würzburg, Germany, 1961)—the first in Italy by the German artist—the Dep Art gallery in Milan closes its exhibition program for summer vacation.
Through a vast selection of works that illustrate the artist's characteristic means of expression, Wolfram Ullrich. Pure Color, Pure Form, from June 21st to September 29th, 2018, precedes the public event where Ullrich will be the protagonist at the MARCA museum in Catanzaro this November.
Visitors will be able to admire around twenty works in acrylic on steel, all made specifically for the show, of large, medium, and small dimensions.
Ullrich's three-dimensional geometric abstractions are the result of assembling steel segments prepared so that the acrylic, which is applied in successive layers, will adhere onto them.
In an attempt to analytically understand the works of Ullrich, from an overall to a detail view of the segments, we find perspective incoherence the artist accentuates with millimetric precision. If on the contrary a synthetic approach is adopted, starting from the fragments and then the total form, the reliefs start to turn on themselves: depending on the viewer's position, the works bend, they become soft, they fold in tight fissures of shadows.
Ullrich's work dialogues not only with the viewer's eye but also with the space and the spectator's motion inside this space, treating both like dynamic variables.
Another fundamental element in the German artist's work is his research and flat use of colour.
Between two and three dimensions, the colours of Ullrich enliven the surface of the walls, marking them with living and interacting presences: beginning with painting, colour becomes a concrete and three-dimensional form, establishing the works in spatial extension, bordering on installations. In fact, Ullrich's intervention unfolds in the space according to the rigorous yet free measure of the sequences that give life overall to a single installation where each element is bound and refers to the next one.
'The exhibition,' states the curator Matteo Galbiati, 'is a precious opportunity to analyse and discover the complex simplicity of the language of the German artist who, by constantly varying few elements, renews each time the dynamics of a beauty that tends to the limits of new and unexpected perspectives.'
The show is accompanied by a bilingual publication (Italian/English) released by Dep Art, edited by Matteo Galbiati and Antonio Addamiano, and contains the curator's essay, the reproduction of all the works on display, installation views of the gallery, a selection of repertoire images, and updated bio-bibliographic information.
After attending liberal arts high school in his city, in 1980 he moved to Stuttgart and enrolled at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste (State Fine Arts Academy); the following year he decided to also attend Art History classes at the Universität Stuttgart, the city’s public university, where he graduated in 1985. Upon completing the academy in 1986, he was given the opportunity to organize his first solo exhibition as early as 1987 right in Stuttgart. If during his studies his research focused on an amplified notion of painting (he himself wrote, “every painting is also an object”), this becomes evident from his works starting in the 1980s where he stands out from the more classic-academic experience: materials alternative to the canvas are chosen for surfaces to explore. In the late 1980s, some works are titled Relief, which perfectly describes his inclination for three-dimensionality in his new production. Between 1990 and 1992 he won three scholarships including a D.A.A.D. (German Academic Exchange Service) in New York, with which he could work on vaster projects and on large-sale pieces. His Faltungen (folds) can be dated to 1990, and are made in painted aluminum or steel, which rise up from the wall and physically conquer the space. In addition to this cycle, throughout the 1990s he opened and closed some series of sculptures like, for example, in 1992, the Islands, works in steel that could be described as solid sections on a folded plane. The colors used are almost exclusively primary—Mondrian’s example is still quite alive and influential upon the artist, just as the American minimalists, such as Frank Stella, in addition to, obviously, Concrete Art. Wolfram Ullrich always specifies he studied “painting” and not “sculpture,” and, after his experience with the Islands, or other cycles like Window and Zone, his works once again occupy the space of the wall, though they definitively acquire body and weight. The material of choice is steel; the works, as the artist himself explains, are literally built by assembling different parts, a process unlike sculpture, where subtraction is key, and so materials like wood are not even conceivable. Beginning in 2000 he started working on single forms, closed polyhedrons where color occupies only the top part whereas the side, the thickness, leaves the gray steel exposed. Subsequently, the number of these “segments” increases, the perspectives are bolder, and in 2014 the Orbit series is born. The colors are vibrant and the layering gives the works a soft, perfect texture. They stand out against the walls, fooling the eye and senses of viewers. Even today, the artist keeps experimenting, constantly taking his investigations one step further: from construction to perception. Wolfram Ullrich lives and works in Stuttgart.
Opening in Milan in 2006 with Mario Nigro’s solo exhibition Opere di Mario Nigro, Dep Art Gallery presents compelling artworks by modern and contemporary Italian and international artists. The gallery moved into its current location in Via Comelico, a former school with substantial exhibition spaces, in 2015. Dedicated to presenting contemporary Italian art, Dep Art Gallery has also been the Turi Simeti archive centre—archiving the artist’s legacy and producing a catalogue raisonne of artworks on canvas—since 2013.
