Heute kein WLAN

SOPHIE ULLRICH

Exhibition duration
9. September – 21. October 2022

The exhibition Heute kein WLAN leads the viewer through a scenery of boredom and smoking heads. Sophie Ullrich invites us to let ourselves be sprinkled analog and to find our way back to a world before digital exchange.

After the WLAN went down due to a change of provider, tea was put on, the shared bookshelf was inspected in search of entertainment values, and the indoor planting was thoroughly watered. This state of affairs was to last a full three days. A forgotten culture of discussion made its way back into the common rooms. No wifi, no quick fact check. Where's your dictionary?

A comic-like stylized figure characterizes Sophie Ullrich's pictures. The outlines, mostly reduced to arms and hands, combine abstract pictorial elements and schematic backgrounds with accurately painted objects. In this humorous narrative, the neutral protagonist slips into a wide variety of roles, enabling the appropriation of a wide variety of objects and consumer items. Recalling advertising aesthetics, her works seem like the painterly satisfaction of media-mediated desires and needs. At the same time, her artistic approach describes a playful exploration of the classical subjects of portraiture and still life in times of potentially interchangeable identities in our selfie and social media society.

Sophie Ullrich graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a master student of Eberhard Havekost.