Justine Otto

Justine Otto creates layered paintings that stun with their deliquescing forms and loose, vibrant brushwork. Drawing inspiration from films and vintage photographs, she paints single figures or groups, immersed in enigmatic activities. Interested in the boundary between figuration and abstraction, Otto’s paintings draw out new possibilities for the co-existence of these two modes.

Otto’s figuration of individuals and groups often nods to archetypes such as generals, lonely cowboys riding on the prairie, Marlboro men, and statesmen in their uniforms. Otto is drawn to these figures “because they were such traditional symbols of power, but now [she] is able to dissolve them in abstract painting. Then, for example, medals become geometric circles, and the forms dissolve into ornaments or loops.” She bathes these figures in jewel-tones and renders them in narratives that seem to be anchored in no specific place or time. Over the years she has developed a wide range of techniques, such as wet-on-wet painting, taping, scraping, leveling out, dissolving all, stamping, opting often to use a number of dissimilar techniques to coalesce a single resonant image.

Born in Poland in 1974, Otto moved to Germany at the age of nine. In 1996, she studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main, with Peter Angermann and Michael Krebber. Between 1997 and 2000, she worked as a stage designer at the Municipal Theatre Frankfurt and won the Volker-Hinniger Prize in 2005. Otto’s works are featured in the permanent collection of the Phillips Collection and in numerous private collections in the United States and Europe. She has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle der Sparkassenstiftung Lüneburg; Kunstverein Duisburg; Städtische Galerie Neunkirchen; Museum Franz Gertsch; Städtische Galerie Eichenmüllerhaus; Städtische Galerie Fürth; Kunstverein Aurich; and Museum Schloss Gifhorn. Otto lives and works in Hamburg and Frankfurt.