Ursus Wehrli has an insatiable desire to tidy. Nothing is safe. Given half the chance Ursus will compartmentalise and order everything from a park full of sunbathers to the sky at night.
Luckily the art world has a lot of time for Ursus' compulsive behaviour when it is translated into witty photographic formats. In his new book 'The Art Of Clean Up: Life Made Neat And Tidy' Ursus goes to town on unkempt arrangements of flowers and haphazardly arranged portions of chips, bringing order to a world of chaos.
The book features before and after photographs of the Ursus treatment, providing a amusing, satisfying, reassuring and interesting experience for he reader.
His previous book 'Tidying Up Art' revealed that not even fellow artist's works are safe from Ursus' critical eye, Van Gough's bedroom gets a spruce up and Magritte's apples are rearranged, Klee's vibrant squares are chromatically stacked and Breugel's busy village is depopulated.
Ursus has been described as “a comedian, live performer and freelance artist” and as a “left-handed, broad-thinking professional typographer.” Funny then, that Ursus himself is hard to pigeon hole.
Further reading: http://www.kunstaufraeumen.ch/de
