Uli Gassmann 
overview of "Uli Universum" mixed media, site-specific installation
at ampersand international arts
September 2004

German Artist Uli Gassmann, has been working with painting, sculpture, photography, set design and architecture for the last thirty years. Gassmann resides in Paris France, and works frequently in Germany and India.  His work celebrates sensory deployment in space and time, movement, memories and chaos, longing and peace; often pointing towards a physical and emotional displacement, towards the rescue of the genius child within us all; the one we were once asked to conceal in order to survive.

Gassmann negotiates the eccentric mechanisms of his very life, homes and travels, into his artwork and offers an altogether particular version of his experience of being alive. From the precise, precocious drawings of his childhood, to the ripened and lush recent photos of his new found love India, or even the tempest of his painterly work, Gassmann projects into the world an enormous amount of poetry and intensity and revels in its mystery and confusion. Subjects or directions are not discussed or suggested, they are captured. Offered to the viewer: the glorious energy and rhythm of the living world fuel the work and the life of Uli Gassmann and like a shaman he believes he must point them out to us, to save us, to save himself. And we believe him.