Uli Boege – The Retrospective of a True Original

One of the most inventive and original exhibitions in LA is up through January 6th at Loft at Liz’s in mid-city. Entelechies: The Art of Uli Boege is wide ranging in medium and visionary in context, as he explores the relationship between humans and nature, civilization itself, and the role playing by women in family life and culture.

Boege’s retrospective explores a vast range of mediums from stained glass to paintings, from collage to inkblot and an utterly unique form of terrazzo art, above. The art exhibited stretches from 1960 to 2020, and as mysteriously wonderful as much of the work is, its message is clean, powerful and persuasive.

“Whatever we do in life, to get a perfect result, is to collaborate with nature on a 50/50 level,” Boege says, noting that from our political ills to climate change and horrors of war, our lack of cooperation with nurturing earth, the earth mother, the female aspect of all nature, is creating the chaos all too visible in the world. He asserts that “this contempt for everything female and nature morphed in a symbiotic denial of our shared reality, smothered by war, addiction, and consumption…”

But there’s a way to put humankind on the right track, Boege asserts. One of the potential therapeutic tools that the artist suggests is creating figurative inkblot paintings, a technique which he has mastered on an epic scale in his Amazonas series. Boege insists that we are “all artists by nature….every inkblot painting is a yin yang masterpiece,” one that allows creators to experience the sensation of “giving birth to a real person,” which will “reconnect us to our long lost and denied love for ourselves.”

While creating work designed to reintroduce us to our spiritual selves – and inviting men to celebrate rather than deny what Boege views as the importance of the female, the artist also strongly condemns the negative institutions of right-wing politics, the hierarchy of the Catholic church, and the corruption of nationalism.

Weighty as these subjects sound, in Boege’s masterful grasp, they become playful and joyous, his way of making dark profundity transform itself into the light. Visually, he sees himself as “the legitimate continuation of Jackson Pollock…we are both action painters, with the difference that I add a narrative…”

For the viewer, this translates into fifty years of evolutionary work in which each differing medium used by Boege takes one into a new artistic chapter, all with an underlying theme that celebrates life, of which the female is an intrinsic core element of life’s creation.

Boege is undoubtedly influenced deeply by his fraught upbringing during World War II, witnessing first-hand the destruction of Dresden. His early years were marked by the inhumanity of men, an impression he carries with him to this day, and which he carried through studies in France to art exhibitions in NYC in the 60s. It was there that he created well-received collage art, while working as the first graphic design director for Essence magazine.

Upon moving to LA, he began working in his unusual form of terrazzo that utilizes plastic as its base, creating a smooth surface that is at once both liquid and deep.

Boege has also made vibrant stained glass lights featuring lush images of nature.

But today, his focus is on his inkblot paintings, in which Boege draws half of a figurative image, then folds the canvas he has painted on to create a second half through a natural process. He is drawn to not knowing what the final result will be, but says he is assured by nature itself, as well as the result of his creative process, that the paintings will be, in their own way, perfect.

The medium in short, to quote Marshall McLuhan, is the message. In his large-scale inkblot on canvas, “Election Night,” he uses red, blue, and black ink to create an image of “mom,” undoubtedly mother earth herself, on a crucifix, while both blue and red factions wave flags at her feet, as if celebrating her demise.

In “Two Me,” inkblot acrylic on canvas, two images of a beautiful young woman mirror each other in an expression of wonder, with a yin-yang symbol suspended between them.

“Home Sweet Home” on the other hand, gives us a figure behind bars, clutching them, mouth open and angry, while “Sadu,” is a solemn forceful being, balancing two globes, one in each hand.

The reverent “Amazonia with Infant” speaks for itself, an elegant woman holding her baby safely in her hands.

 

And the gestational red and black inkblot “Vetruvian Wombman alias Brunhilde” is reminiscent in design and title of course of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man.”

 

The exhibition is filled with these impressive, enormous canvasses, with the most impressive of all the sculptural creation from them, a multi-sided panoply of ink blot beings displayed in the center of the main gallery. Off to the side are several of the luminous stained-glass art lamps Boege has created and vibrant lush depictions of nature that are sensually shaped and potent.

The project room contains a series of the artist’s jewel-like terrazzo art works – he has also made furniture from his terrazzo materials In “Girl Riding A Hoop,” the figure is a lovely sea green, the hoop itself a mesmerizing spiral. This piece, and the body of Boege’s terrazzo wall sculptures, recall both ancient Greek and Roman artworks and the Art Deco era of the 1920s. The artist’s work here utilizes terrazzo, marble, turquoise, and carnival glass.

The exhibition also features a variety of paintings, and in a briefer tribute to his earliest fine art, there are fluid examples of the artist’s collages, delicate in line and gracefully nuanced, and also recalling Art Deco styling.

As curator Monique Birault says, “Uli is an inventor. He can’t just be a ‘maker’ repeating or copying processes, he creates his own language and invents new ways of shaping his art – it’s his way of giving birth.”

She adds that “Uli’s voice is that of one of the few artists left alive and producing art born under Germany’s falling bombs. I became committed to helping him bring his vision to life in this exhibit before we no longer have access to him and other voices of his time and experience. He wants to teach others to carry on what he has developed. That is a gift, one that opens a creative door, even after the exhibition ends.”

The show runs through January 6^th; Loft at Liz’s will be closed from December 24 until January 2^nd, so do mark your calendars for the final week of this inventive exhibition.

• Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis and provided by Monique Birault