Description
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, b. 1943) is a German artist, now based in Amsterdam, Holland, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ulay received international recognition for his work as a photographer, mainly in Polaroid, from the late 1960s, and later as a performance artist, including his collaborative performances with Marina Abramović from 1976 to 1988. His work has continuously dealt with politics, identity and gender. In 2016 Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, held the first major retrospective show of his work ‘Ulay Life-Sized’. In recent years Ulay’s work has also been on show at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam and GNYP Gallery in Berlin. Ulay’s work, as well as his collaborative work with Marina Abramović, is featured in many collections of major art institutions around the world such as Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Modern in London and Museum of Modern Art in New York.https://vimeo.com/248153666 )
In 1976 Ulay decided to steal the painting ‘Der arme Poet’ (The Poor Poet) (1839) by Carl Spitzweg, which was said to be Hitler’s favorite painting, from the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) in Berlin. After he succeeded in getting the painting out of the museum, Ulay drove – with the museum guards at his heels – to Kreuzberg, which was known as a ghetto for immigrants. Here, Ulay ran through the snow with the painting under his arm, first to Haus Bethanien (now Kunstquartier Bethanien) and then to a Turkish family living in Muskauerstraße, who had agreed to let him shoot a documentary film in their home – however unaware that it involved a stolen painting. Before entering the family’s home, the artist called the police from a phone booth and asked for the director of the museum to pick up the painting. He then hung up the painting in the home of the family “for the reason to bring this whole issue of Turkish discriminated foreign workers into the discussion. To bring into discussion the institute’s marginalization of art. To bring a discussion about the correspondence between art institutes from the academy to museums to whatever.”
At the talk and videoscreening by Ulay at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien clips from the performance ‘There’s a Criminal Touch to Art’ (1976) by Ulay, showing Ulay’s theft of Carl Spitzweg’s painting ‘Der arme Poet’ from the Neue Nationalgalerie and the consequent reception by the press, will be shown. Marina Abramović photographically documented the entire action, while Werner Herzog’s former cameraman Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein recorded the action from a vehicle following Ulay’s van. Afterwards there will be the opportunity to talk about why Ulay chose Spitzweg’s painting and discuss Ulay’s and Brad Downeys artistic means of institutional critique and how there is a “criminal touch to art”.
Within the framework of SLOW MOTION DISASTERS, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based artist Brad Downey presented by Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien. Both have a long history with each other: Downey came to Berlin in 2003 as part of the street art fes- tival Backjumps. In 2011, as part of the exhibition Do Not Think, he unveiled a work by British artist Banksy hidden by twenty-five layers of color. With SLOW MOTION DISASTERS, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien is now dedicating an exhibition to Downey’s latest works. Adding to his work in the public domain it includes film, photography, sculpture, drawing, and immersive installations. In doing so, Downey focusses on the relationship between the individual, the state authority and political power relations, and creates on a scale that ranges from the minimal and the megalomaniac.
