Ulrike Ottinger: Journée d’un G.I. Cat. CFA Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin

Journée d’un G.I. features paintings and serigraphs from the 1960s. Ulrike Ottinger’s often multi-part works, or works divided into several pictorial fields, reveal a passion for storytelling that ultimately finds its fulfillment in the medium of film. She became somewhat of a cult star in cineaste circles with her Berlin trilogy and its outstanding second film Freak Orlando (1981). In 2019, in the diary Paris Calligrammes, she went on to show memories of her formative decade in Paris in a cinematic collection, which brings us right to the heart of the pictorial narratives of Journée d’un G.I. It’s the mid-1960s, Ulrike Ottinger is a painter, when Paris is shaken by images of war and revolution. At home in Nouvelle Figuration, a Parisian form of Pop Art, it is everyday scenes, comics, photography, and advertising that determine the narrative style of Ottinger’s images. Day-to-day rituals mingle with references to historical figures and literary heroes. While the daily battles rage, her heroes are taking a break; Che Guevara as “Le penseur” is lolling on a sofa while sipping a drink; Allen Ginsberg has “No more to say and nothing to weep for.”

Nicole Hackert and Bruno Brunnet (the founder of the gallery in 1992) are a permanent part of the international gallery world with CFA situated now at Grolmanstraße in Berlin/Charlottenburg. Their work is an inherent part of the beginning of the artistic careers of Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Sarah Lucas, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, TAL R, Daniel Richter, Christian Rosa, Dana Schutz, Norbert Schwontkowski, Katja Strunz, Juergen Teller, or Marianne Vitale, just to name a few. Dana Žaja, born in 1994, studied art history and comparative literature at the University of Zagreb and in the master’s program at the FU Berlin with a concentration on contemporary art.