JUSTINE OTTO
NEWS
ADORANTEN
(soloshow)
opening: 18. Oktober, 18 h
18. Oktober - 18. November
POLARRAUM HAMBURG
HEUSSWEG 89
20255 HEUSSWEG
HUMAN NATURE
1. September - 10. November 2024
MUSEUM SCHLOSS SALDER
STÄDTISCHE KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN
SCHLOSS SALDER
MUSEUMSSTRASSE 14
38229 SALZGITTER
KINKY-MALEREI IM SAFT
kuratiert von Zuzanna Skiba
5. September - 24. November 2024
artists:
Marie Aly, Peter Böhnisch, Pius Fox, Tom Früchtl, Simone Haack, Michael Kirkham, Peter Klare, Anna Leonhardt, Nikolaus List, Ena Oppenheimer, Justine Otto, Lawrence Power, Dennis Scholl, Eva Schwab, Kerstin Serz, Zuzanna Skiba, Nicola Stäglich, Anna Steinert, Adrian Wald, Marenne Welten
MUSEUM REINICKENDORF
Galerie Etage
Alt-Hermsdorf 35
13467 Berlin
www.museum-reinickendorf.de
ABOUT
JUSTINE OTTO
born in Zabrze/Poland.
1996 - 2003 Graduate Studies Free Painting at the Staatliche Hochschule - Städelschule - Frankfurt a. M
2003 Meisterschülerin by Prof. Michael Krebber and Prof. Peter Angermann
AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS:
2014 Phillips collection emerging artist prize, Washington D.C (USA)
2010 Lukas Stipendium in Skagaströnd (Island)
2011 Kunstpreis des Lüneburgischen Landschaftsverbandes
2011 Kulturförderpreis Bildende Kunst des Landkreises Lüneburg
2013 Rolf Seisser Preis des Lions Clubs Frankfurt
2005 Volker-Hinniger Preis der Stadtgalerie Bamberg 2000 AEG Kunstpreis Ökologie
Numerous exhibitions at home and abroad
COLLECTIONS: Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. USA, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Ines und Jürgen Graf Stiftung, Köln, Museum Abtei Liesborn, Museum Angerlehner, Österreich, Museum Franz Gertsch Schweiz (Willy Michel Stiftung), Schweiz; Niehaus Pharma, Ingelheim, Soer Rusche, Oelde/ Berlin; Kunsthalle Hense Bochum; Blobel, New York; Ammann Collection, Schweiz ; Philippe Leeman, Antwerpen; Connersmith, Washington D.C,; Lauer Collection Washington D.C.
© Sandra Mann Foto
Saša Bogojev in Justine Otto's 'New Traditionalists' at DCV Verlag
The inconspicuous thematic and stylistic shifts which have marked Justine Otto's artistic practice over the years have been regularly commended. They were prompted by the compelling impetus of freedom: the freedom to choose subjects that resonate with a point in time, as well as the freedom to utilize paint and modify her technical approach to fit the atmosphere of a given moment. From working
with female figures at the beginning, through a transition to masculine archetypes (heroes, leaders, or cowboys), to the most recent musician paintings, the Polish-born, Germanbased artist has harnessed the increasingly intense and motivating sensation of experiencing an artistic deliverance. And although they stemmed from different sources of inspiration and were energized by disparate intentions, each chapter of her ever-evolving practice pointed towards the next one, developing an oeuvre that, in a way, imitatesthe dynamics of life.
Larissa Kikol in Justine Otto's Melancholy beneath a hot wind at 'New Traditionalists' at DCV Verlag
...There is no unequivocal answer. The true temperature in Justine Otto’s worlds remains a secret. Whatever it is, the living conditions are in any case inhospitable, so that every movement is a miracle. Even in a fever dream it is difficult to distinguish between shivering, between coldand hot. Rising above that remains the sad romanticism of a man, condemned to loneliness, in the freedom of his solitude. Even the presence of loyal animals (the dogs and horses) does not relieve a certain forlornness. And when the man finally melts into his surroundings, dissolves into this environment, a feeling of leave-taking arises, a sense of melancholy. In this mood the series of portraits seems like a gallery of ancestors and the landscape scenes like nostalgic tales. And yet they are lit up in the here and now, like the glow of the cigarettes.
Jean-Christophe Ammann in Justine Otto's Female Territory at 'Halbpension' at Kerber Verlag
‘Fairy tales are true’, says the artist. What she does is to intensify fairy tale themes by engaging in a medialisation process that blurs their levels of reality. Through the harshness of her pictures, their implacability, Justine Otto creates a reality that is neither overdone nor pathetic, but that touches a nerve in a present time in which extremes are either embedded or exploding, in which the erotic quality of these extremes appear as extended, atrophied, travesties or fetishes of themselves.
Silke Hohmann in Justine Otto's 'Heroes and Hoaxes' at Hatje Cantz
Justine Otto's heroic paintings work away at the history of painting just as they do at humanity's myths of masculinity. They are broken figures: they stand their ground, but their uniforms, saddle horses, and other symbols of status are permeable or dysfunctional. Speed (2016) shows a rider on he prairie- or is it a German lake welling up under the blue and red sky? A watchful herding dog looks up at the hero, who could be a settler, a Don Quixote or a fugitive. Except that this horse has seemingly unstable wooden posts in the place of legs. 'Speed' of a certain kind may thus be out of the question, but instead we are offered a fast-paced ride though the imagery of art history and pop culture from Emil Nolde to Lassie – and the fragile legs of the horse would seem to serve as an easel. In this manner, all of Otto's subjects and themes are always investigations into painting itself. What is feasible? What is representable? And what are the appropriate techniques? In her new works Otto has emancipated herself from the painter who paints women with a seemingly light hand. In her recent paintings she practices a different form of painting in which she relates figuration and abstraction to one another and makes use of templates. The attention she pays to the heroes is tantamount to a form of liberation, an opening for all of painting's inherent opportunities, things always worthy of reexamination.
Mark Gisbourne in Justine Otto's 'Heroes and Hoaxes' at Hatje Cantz
The sense of the mental search for and a “gathering” of ideas is emblematic of Justine Otto’s creative synthesis as seen in the figurative-to-abstract aspects of her latest paintings. In seeking the material resolution of an imagined inner picture, there is a processing thesis, a new treatment of surface and material means, as well as the distilled potential and existing inner thoughts about what the immediate idea of a given painting might seek to achieve. Unlike the incised moment of a photographic image, a painting practice always emerges through the interconnected unfolding visual stages of studio-based and accumulative temporal processes.5 The painter’s situational response is that of an initial state of resistance that becomes assimilated and progressively mediated. As any handkunstwerk painter-practitioner knows, no painting is ever easily won, and the pictorial outcome has to be (con)tested and mastered in the continuous processing of its developmental making. This observation is significant when we consider the synthesized subject paintings of someone like Otto. The newly painted works increasingly engage with the pictorial sophistication of translated collage, an aide-mémoire, perhaps, operating in the deconstructed interstices between figuration and abstraction.
EXHIBITIONS
ALL SHADES, ALL HUES, ALL BLUES
(soloshow)
HOLLIS TAGGART GALLERY, NEW YORK,
2024
LE VENT NOUS PORTERA
(soloshow)
MUSEUM ABTEI LIESBORN
2021
MIT SCHALL UND RAUCH
(soloshow)
NEUE GALERIE GLADBECK
2021-2022
VOIX
MNW BERLIN - LEIPZIG ( groupshow)
MUSEUM DER BILDENDEN KÜNSTE LEIPZIG
2019
PUBLICATIONS
RECENT ARTICLES
ZEIT_ KUNST UND AUKTIONEN
ENSUITE_KULTURMAGAZIN; SWITZERLAND
JUSTINE OTTO
NEW TRADITIONALISTS
mit Texten von Larissa Kikol, Sasa Bogojev und Heinz-Norbert Jocks
with texts by Larissa Kikol , Sasa Bogojev and
Heinz - Norbert Jocks
JUSTINE OTTO
HEROES & HOAXES
PUBLISHED BY HATJE CANTZ
Text(e) von Silke Hohmann, Mark Gisbourne
Deutsch, Englisch
2018. 184 Seiten, 111 Abb.
Leinen
24,50 x 29,00 cm
ISBN 978-3-7757-4502-4
JUSTINE OTTO
HALBPENSION
PUBLISHED BY KERBER VERLAG
Text(e) von Jean - Christophe Ammann ( Autor),
Anna Wesle ( museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Schweiz
Deutsch, Englisch
2013. 80 Seiten,
24,1 x 1,3 x 27,9 cm
ISBN 978-3866788084
JUSTINE OTTO
TODAY IS TOMORROW'S YESTERDAY
PUBLISHED BY Städtische Galerie Neunkirchen and
kunst galerie fürth
Text(e) von Prof. Peter Angermann, Hans -Peter Miksch/Leiter der kunst galerie fürth und Nicole Nix- Hauck (Leiterin der Städtischen Galerie Neunkirchen)
2014, 48 Seiten,
24,1 x 1,3 x 27,9 cm
ISBN 978-3-941715-11-0
JUSTINE OTTO
HELTER SKELTER
PUBLISHED BY KERBER VERLAG
Publikation anläßlich der Verleihung des Kunstpreises 2010/2011 des Lüneburgischen Landschaftsverbandes
Text(e) von Jean - Christophe Ammann und Verena Titze
Deutsch, Englisch
2011. 80 Seiten,
29 x 1,3 x 25,6 cm
ISBN 978-3-86678-587-8
JUSTINE OTTO
ZÄHNE UND KRALLEN
PUBLISHED by Nordlanddruck
Text(e) von Dr. Susanne Pfleger, und Dr. Isa Bickmann
2009, 48 Seiten,
25,3 x 1,3 x 27,9 cm
ART DAS KUNSTMAGAZIN
Nr. 10/ OKTOBER 2005