Collection: Justine Otto

In the exhibition Wunderwelten (2017, Lachenmann Art Konstanz), the artist Justine Otto, who is represented in renowned museums and collections, shows a series of portraits that, when viewed from a distance, sometimes appear surprisingly mimetic, but are equally abstracted up close by drastic and wild brushwork, and which repeatedly shows the same girl as the protagonist.

The form of the portrait has accompanied Justine Otto in her work for over ten years. After a shift in focus to scenic subjects, she returns to this form of representation with the series presented here, which was created in early 2016. This shows a new approach in the artist's work; while the focus of older portraits was on realism and elaboration of the flesh, today the color and the style themselves are much more important. In contrast to canvas, the chosen surface offers the prerequisite of an unyielding material that offers sufficient resistance to the tool to create structures and gradients differently and to create shades by removing or dissolving color. Painting on a smooth surface puts the color and its texture at the center, and the element of chance also gains in importance in the process; the application of color is freer and serves less to reinforce the content of the motif than to celebrate its own painterly variations.

In about half of the portraits, a clearly visible ductus, as well as watery streaks of color, drops and cracks, adorn the girl's skin, whereby the color always exists within a real body form and thus constitutes it in a natural way.
In the other three works in the series, the color appears to be explosively freed from form; boundaries from head to neck and shoulders are sometimes only vaguely visible through the curtain of color. The brushwork here is raw, experimental and playful, the colors draw circles, form pale, semi-transparent streaks and intensely opaque fields - everything takes place naturally next to each other and merges into a unity.

The connection between the girl's expression and the world of colors and shapes that she consists of or into which she dissolves remains open. Does the girl wear her inner self on the outside and thus her feelings on her skin for everyone to see? Dreams and wishes, but also doubts and insecurity in the girl's emotional world on her way to becoming a woman are reflected in the diverse colors and structures.
Or are the human features just a variation of the wild application of paint?
Justine Otto never finishes telling the stories, but she manages to paint a fascinating liveliness and gripping emotionality, both in the eyes of the young faces—whose magical gaze captivates because it is expressive and clear, yet completely mysterious—as well as in the abstract passages.

The portrait series, in which color celebrates itself, represents the transition from figurative to more abstract painting and thus marks a significant turning point in Justine Otto's oeuvre. — Christina Wigger