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Ulay | Untitled (from the series "Renais sense"), 1970

Polaroid

Description

Renais-Sense (1970) is a seminal work from Ulay's early period in Amsterdam, predating his collaboration with Marina Abramović. In this piece, Ulay utilizes the boomerang an object designed to return to its source to construct a graphic symbol that explores the concept of the "eternal return" and the duality of identity. By arranging four boomerangs into a rotational cross (a swastika), Ulay reclaims the symbol's ancient origins as a sign of movement, the sun, and cosmic order, stripping it of its 20th-century political associations to focus on its geometric and philosophical essence. This work belongs to the Renais-Sense series, a play on the words "Renaissance" and "Sense." It represents Ulay's transition from a graphic designer to a conceptual artist. The boomerang serves as a metaphor for the self-reflective nature of his art: an action sent out into the world that inevitably returns to the creator.

30.5 × 38.9 cm

Unique

Price

5.600,00 €

Year

1970

Type

Photography

Price

5.600,00 €

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

BORN IN SOLINGEN, GERMANY, 1943.

LIVED AND WORKED: ACROSS EUROPE AND INTERNATIONALLY, SPENDING TIME IN LJUBLJANA (SLOVENIA), WHERE THE ULAY FOUNDATION WAS ESTABLISHED AND WHERE HE SPENT HIS FINAL YEARS.

Frank Uwe Laysiepen, better known under his moniker Ulay, is known for his boundary-pushing performance art practice, most notably the conceptual pieces he performed with his longtime artistic and romantic partner Marina Abramović. Ulay and Abramović worked together for 12 years, and their performances often centered on testing the physical and mental stamina of both partners. Pieces such as Light / Dark (1977), in which they slapped each other repeatedly, or The Lovers (1988), in which the couple walked more than 1,000 miles each from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China to meet in the middle, exemplified their extreme approach to their practice and led to the pair becoming icons of performance art. Ulay’s commitment to testing the limits of the body extends to his work as a photographer, with images that largely focus on explorations of identity and the self. He has exhibited in cities across the world, and his works are in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.

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