So we see him – U

German-born contemporary artist Ulay has previously used his art to take radical action. Now, his life works can be seen at DJCAD in an exhibit called So You See Me, until December 16

Across five decades, Frank Uwe Laysiepen, aka Ulay, has been creating thought-provoking and boundarypushing performance art and photography. His use of Polaroid cameras, poetry collages and film created timeless pieces in the 1970s, all underpinned by three words which reverberate throughout his work: ethics, identity and resistance.

“What I said in the 1970s still stands today: aesthetics without ethics is cosmetics,” states the 73-year-old Slovenia-based German artist ahead of So You See Me, his retrospective exhibition at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design’s Cooper Gallery. “I believe it is still valid and important to think about ethics in the context of art as well as in the context of our lives.”

As an acclaimed performance artist, he often takes art out of the gallery space. He achieved this quite literally in the instance of 1976’s There’s A Criminal Touch To Art (a film of which is part of the Cooper Gallery exhibition), where he stole a painting from the New National Gallery in Berlin and hung it up in a Turkish family’s home.

His point was to simultaneously make an ethical statement about the institutionalisation of art and discrimination against immigrants in Germany and across Europe.

But often in doing something highly provocative, people still apply labels and stick such eye-catching activity straight into pigeonholes.

To that end, does he reject the term ‘performance artist’?

“For me it is just another classification for how my work and engagement is

Some of the work that is on display at the Cooper Gallery exhibition.