Ulu Braun “Südwest” (Southwest)

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Ulu Braun, D: «Südwest» (southwest), video, 2006

On entering the exhibition you are confronted with a panorama that emphasizes the totality, the paradox, and the heterogeneity of all the touristic drafts or designs of landscape in a slow but a abundant pan, full of everything visible: mountains, lakes or the sea, woods and cable cars, high voltage current poles, the roaring helicopter, the wild hog, the wild sow, the horseman, and the tepee. And amidst, reality disrupting, piercing the idyll: a furry piece of meat, a newly hatched chick, eerily contorting itself, and a jet of water, threatening in their presence.

“Südwest” is a dark-humoured collage depicting our times, depicting everyone wanting to participate in capitalistic progress and sweeping its dark backside under the carpet or taking it with a lot of humour, turning it into something amusing. The title, literally, refers to the mutual dependence of the rich “west” and the poor “south”, as illustrated by the brown folks washing themselves in the water. Ulu Braun’s fresh and crude approach to pictorial idioms and aesthetics and diverse clichés is a critical equivalent of our casual, careless and egoistical approach to nature and the environment.