Ute Woracek has been working as an artist in several media for over two decades. One focus is on videos, which together with installations probably make up the most important part of her work. Less numerous, but profoundly anchored in her work over several years, are the works that Ute Woracek develops as projects over longer periods of time and documents photographically - in the form of a pictorial chronicle. Other photographic works, some of them of considerable size, complement her oeuvre. Also worthy of mention are her drawings, which are partly abstract and partly figurative notations in colored ink on paper and form the smallest format of her oeuvre, enriching it with a further thematic and material dimension.

Ute Woracek's works are about a highly idiosyncratic gaze, which she directs at the immediate proximity of the realities surrounding her: these are absorbed in order to reach us in an altered form after a subtle transformation process. Ute Woracek strips things of their conventionality so that we learn to see them differently and more profoundly. One example of this is her work "Documentation of a men's toilet 1998-2015", which was created over the course of 17 years. It documents how a cherished tradition persists in a small garden community - even beyond the actual use of the toilet structure.
Props from her video works - parts of the "men's toilet" as well as stirrups, clay pigeons or dolls - are further processed in sculptural works. In exhibitions, they are also linked to independently created sculptures, such as the multi-part work "Heimspiel", each of which unfolds its own aura, as in the case of the sand-filled jute sacks hung with black ribbons and stacked high on wooden shelves.

Darker themes also come to mind. For example, a sculpture formed as a sphere from bullet casings protruding all around, which creates a geometrically beautiful structure that can also leave the impression of undefined danger. A similar impression is created in the video work ..... in which the click-clack balls popular in the 1970s produce gunshot-like popping noises against a black background. What one wants to glean from this and other works is up to the viewer, as the author and artist Harry Walter put it at an earlier exhibition by Ute Woracek: looking at art is an art in itself, is even an actual art that the viewer has to achieve.

Overall, Ute Woracek's materially diverse oeuvre demonstrates a contextual coherence that has grown over many years and documents the constant aesthetic development of her idiosyncratic artistic core themes.

Prof. Irene Brückle

In her work, Ute Woracek surrounds herself with found objects and presents them either generously and without commentary, so that their original, peculiar charisma remains entirely to themselves.
Or she arranges them in stagings in such a way that oppressive images, which these found objects already quietly hint at, force themselves upon us.
In addition, she allows the objects to work as props or figures in sometimes gloomy, ritualistic scenes or transforms them into cinematic, photographic or object-like stagings.

'A fly in amber' is the title of her latest exhibition project. Using large-format video projections and unusual props full of associations, she creates places with a special charisma. Her productions are dreamlike and nightmarish, touch on the existential and appear threatening in their hopelessness.

Peter Haury, Galerie Oberwelt

Good evening, I would like to welcome you to the opening of the exhibition "Erkaltung der Restwärme" by the artist Ute Woracek. As soon as you enter our exhibition rooms this evening, you can feel the seriousness that these works radiate, you can feel the last remnants of warmth fading away. The clown in this wall-filling video here moves in an endless loop, the standing man is enclosed in a box, his movements are slowed down, seem infinitely strenuous, again and again he has to pull himself together, has to stand up again, when the laborious act of standing up already contains the act of lying down. He is condemned to endless movement, repeatedly banging his head against the wall, a roar reminiscent of huge church bells, trapped for all eternity, condemned to endless toil. His surroundings are a prison that appears colorful. A closer look, however, reveals that these are colorful shotgun shells made not to amuse but to kill. The fact that the clown is just a child's toy doesn't make things any better; there is not even the consolation of childhood, on the contrary, it is included in this infinite futility. Ute Woracek studied in Nürtingen and at the Art Academy in Stuttgart, during which time philosophy had a profound influence on her art.

She knows how to make this depth tangible. Here she shows us how no system of meaning shows people the way they are thrown into life. Ute Woracek's art touches on the existential.
Those who have known her art for some time will certainly be thinking of works that are more conceptual in nature. The men's toilet, the documentation of this long-term observation can be found at http://uteworacek.de, shows us how an intimate place is created every year for the summer festival of a garden club. It shows how publicity and intimacy are interwoven, how the men of the club take care to create a place of retreat for themselves and the other male visitors that is protected from prying eyes, perhaps also a place of community where men can stand together undisturbed at a urinal. Ute Woracek's works are inspired by special places with a particular charisma. Her latest work is again based on objects, this time not personal objects, but objects that are important to other people and would save them in the event of a fire. In contrast to the very directly emotional works here in our exhibition, the artist creates more distance in this work. It is not the objects that resonate with her, that she associates with emotions, but objects belonging to a wide variety of people participating in the project, who associate their emotions with the objects.

Ute Woracek's videos and video stills shown here are threatening in their hopelessness, but are they really without hope? It is precisely through the treatment of hopelessness, through the "beautiful" aesthetic treatment of the emotions and the way the emotions are brought to an end, that they are able to give comfort. Ute Woracek shows us what art is capable of: bringing together philosophy, feelings, objects, places, aesthetics... and make them tangible in a new medium. But we have to experience this in the art itself, in this sense: have a nice evening!

Peter Schmidt