Ulrich Wulff

StatementCVExhibitions

b. 1975 in Kempten/Allgäu, Germany

lives and works in Berlin

Ulrich Wulff’s most recent paintings present a figure that has made reoccurring appearances in nearly all of his paintings for over a decade. This character, with it’s bulging, antenna-like eyes, embodies for Wulff a mutable, calligraphic, or even cartoonish attempt at self representation. Though it can be identified as a central actor in a narrative tableaux of sorts, it’s primary function is to orient the artist in the endless field of possibility that opens up any time a new painting is begun.

Wulff consistently operates from this fundamental point of entry, so that the art-making process becomes one not only of formal experimentation, but of personal inquiry and dialogue with the ever-changing conditions of social and cultural life. Be it an ongoing attempt at self-portraiture (alongside self-critique) with the understanding that the self is simultaneously the best and least known feature of human experience.

Though Wulff does not examine his biography in a topical manner or from an openly psychological standpoint, his paintings evolve according to the organic, unpredictable flow of life. In much this way his painting practice can be seen as part of his broader repertoire of activities such as an “Artistic Training Facility” in the desert environment of Chambless, California; the co-founding and administration of the Berlin Art Prize; and the direction, along with artist friends André Butzer and Thomas Winkler, of the Berlin publishing initiative Verlag Heckler und Koch and the virtual gallery European Fine Art.

Ulrich Wulff (b. 1975) has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at venues that include Truth and Consequences, Geneva (2014); Salon Dahlmann, Berlin (2013); and Kunstverein Heppenheim, Germany (with Thomas Winkler, 2011). Among his group exhibitions are Wo ies hier?#1: Malerei und Gegenwart, Kunstverein Reutlingen, Germany (2014); Fürchtet Euch nicht!’ Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Germany (2014); El Museu El Dorado, Museo El Dorado, Madrid (2012); European Fine Art, Kunsthalle Kempten, Germany (2011); Kunstausstellungen auf La(s) Palma(s), Spain (2010); No Capri for Old Men, Los Angeles (2009) and Pop-Auge und die ewingen Quatschkommoden-Deutsche und Amerikanische Kunst seit 1999, Patrick Painter, Los Angeles (2008). Wulff lives and works in Berlin.

 

Ulrich Wulff; INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE CAVE, 2015; oil on canvas; 39.5 x 23.5 in.
Ulrich Wulff; Untitled, 2013; oil on canvas; 24 x 16 in.