Panta rhei - Everything flows
For two with Ursula & Bernard Schultze

"Everything flows" is the title of a chapter in the catalog of the internationally acclaimed 2023 retrospectiveUrsula- Das bin ich. So what?" at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. Everything flows - again, one must say, because the exhibition in Cologne follows a tough, almost three-decade-long phase of institutional exhibition doldrums and corresponding marginalization of Ursula's (1921-1999) artistic oeuvre.

The artist shares this fate with many other women in art - but equally shared is the resurgence in recent years of the reception of female, often historical positions. The resulting reintegration of important positions into the canon of art history, which has long since lapsed, also resonates beyond the field of art, in society and is part of the current zeitgeist.

The formula of panta rhei - everything flows in Greek - is the leitmotif of the exhibition for two with Urusla and Bernard Schultze. As a specific interpretation, the formula is not only applicable to Ursula's works, it is also closely linked to the work of Bernard Schultze, Ursula's husband, studio and life partner.

Similar to the intimate studio situation of the artist couple, the exhibition on the top floor of the gallery is intended to create a situation of juxtaposition and simultaneous proximity and at the same time, via the formula of Panta rhei, enable an immersion into the complex pictorial worlds of Ursula and Bernard Schultze.

Ursula
- Visual worlds of self-organized energy

"Ursula's paintings are full of people and animals, plants and things that are in a state of transformation [...] In Ursula's pictorial worlds there is no distinction between animate and inanimate matter, rather it seems as if things are imbued with a self-organizing energy. This is based on a view of the world that also underlies Ovid's philosophy. In Metamorphoses it says: 'Everything flows, every appearance is formed alternately'".

Bernard Schultze
- Networking to form an organic unit

Bernard Schultze's paintings are characterized by a " [...] parallelism of artistic creative processes and natural processes of formation and decay. Like biomorphic formations, the gestalt-like formal inventions grow in the course of the painting process, are partly superimposed by other formations and network into an organic unity."

This self-organizing energy of things in Ursula's work and Schultze's formal inventions that network into an organic unity both follow the formula of panta rhei.

The flowing and constantly changing, the growing, proliferating and decaying, is extremely present in both works. The sometimes microscopic detail of the design, often without a recognizable point of departure or perspective, changes in the next moment into a macrocosm of provoked chaos, only to dissolve - as Schultze says - into complicated order.

The chaos may superficially be closer to Schultze's work, but Ursula's works often adhere to a recognizable, albeit surreal, pictorial idea, which rarely dissolves completely in its external form. In their essence, both works harmonize with the passage in Ovid's Metamorphoses that is central to this exhibition:

Nothing remains in the same form, and loving change
Nature always creates new forms from others,
and in the vastness of the world nothing - believe me - is lost;
change and exchange is only in the form. Coming into being and becoming
only means beginning to be different than usual, and passing away
no longer being as before. Let this be moved here,
this perhaps there: on the whole, everything is constant.

The art historian Helena Kuhlmann aptly comments that "this famous speech in its entirety is just as revealing of Ursula's work as it seems to be relevant in our (modern) times." Adding to this, the same can also apply to the work of Bernard Schultze.

Creative processes
‍-The artist no longer composes with a pre-planned result in mind, unlike the female artist

In relation to the work of Ursula and Bernard Schultze, Panta rhei implies not only aspects of content, but also the question of the creative process, as one assumes a working method that is also in a state of flux. For Schultze this can be affirmed, Stephan Diedrich describes his working process vividly:

In the beginning there is the white canvas. Starting from one, or often several points, Bernard Schultze feels his way into the pictorial space, pushing a color form a little further before letting it branch out or breaking it off, starting again and developing it further in a different direction. In the process, he rotates the picture support several times, changes the directional axes of horizontal and vertical, top and bottom, thus creating new pictorial-spatial situations during the painting process. Step by step, complex networks emerge [...] sometimes reminiscent of ramifications in the air, then again of roots in earthy matter or impenetrable thickets.

The artistic attitude in Schultze's creative process is clearly indebted to Art Informel, as the artist shaped it as a protagonist in Germany in the 1950s.

The artist Schultze no longer composes towards a pre-planned result, in complete contrast to the artist Ursula:

I hereby declare that everything in my work is quite reasonable, says Ursula, and continues: The picture sits in the shell of my head and waits to be released into the outside world, onto the canvas.

Bernard Schultze observes his wife: The wild drawing gestures outline grotesque figures at the beginning. [...] And then, as if in a reversal, the impatient leaning over begins [...]. Piece by piece is painted with great perseverance, and at the end everything fits together, interlocking to form a 'sacred surface', without any subsequent correction. This is astonishing.

Kuhlmann compares Schultze's admiration with Ovid's description of the wondrous process of material metamorphosis in the Lydian weaver Arachne, who was so talented that one thought she must have been gifted by Athena: 'Not only the finished fabrics, no, to see them become was a pleasure, with such grace she practiced her skill'.

A striking detail: Bernard Schultze gave Ursula the nickname Spider shortly after they met and the artist often used it to sign works. This anecdote is another example of the close interweaving of panta rhei in the work and shared life of Ursula and Bernard Schultze.

For two
‍-With each other, against each other

Manfred de la Motte, who formulated the (working) relationship between Ursula and Bernard Schultze in their artist book entitled "zu zweit" as follows, should have the final word on an exhibition of the coexistence and cooperation of two strong artistic positions with such different careers:

"Would you be proud if I proved exactly how little you owe to Ursula - or would you be happy if I made an analytical effort to do the exact opposite? That would be ludicrous and pointless - and both completely wrong.
‍
Let's leave it at "two": with each other, against each other, each the whetstone of the other, and any (in layman's terms) occasional similarities would then be purely coincidental, as in the movies, but not in life.