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 color. Between two and three dimensions, the colors of Ullrich enliven the surface of the walls, marking them with living and interacting presences: beginning with painting, color 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 analyze 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.