Faces, Found Objects and Rough Riders

Artpace San Antonio - Gallery Notes:
Ulrike Ottinger - New Works

About the artist

Ulrike Ottinger began experimenting with collage, performance, and photography in the 1960s before turning primarily to film toward the end of the decade. Since then she has produced eighteen cinematic works and countless photographs. Consistently playing with conventions of modernism and the classical avant-garde, she nurtures traces of the familiar and the unfamiliar, the real and the fantastic, allowing each to seamlessly intermingle with the others.
      Many of Ottinger's films explore issues of metamorphosis and inclusion. In Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984) protagonist Dr. Frau Mabuse uses the power of prohibition to make and break the character of Dorian Gray, who ultimately undergoes a transformation from Bauhaus-dandy to evil tycoon. Ottinger complicates such familiar themes by reversing dominant gender roles and manipulation key transformative moments.
      Ottinger has increasingly turned toward cultural studies, employing more documentary strategies in her photographs and films. In the film Exile Shanghai (1997) Ottinger documents the stories of six German, Austrian, and Russian Jews whose lives intersect when they flee to Shanghai. Employing interviews, narrative, photographs, and other documentation, the film capitalizes on the tension between art and ethnography.
      Ulrike Ottinger was born in Konstanz, Germany in 1942. She has had solo exhibitions at such venues as National Museum Center of Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2004); Witte de With, Bild-Archive, Rotterdam, Holland (2004); The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, IL (2003); and Goethe Institut, Barcelona, Spain (2002). Group exhibitions include Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); Sessions, Bild-Archive, Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin. Germany (2001) and 39th Venice Biennale, Italy (1980).

About the project

To gather material for Faces, Found Objects, and Rough Riders, Ulrike Ottinger attended festivals, processions, and cultural events in and around San Antonio, taking over 800 photographs along the way. The installation comingles photographic portraits, drawings, and ephemera from the area to investigate the foundations and practices of local cultures.
      Presiding over the gallery is a large-scale photo covering the back wall with nine smaller images adorning those adjacent. Most of the photos are black and white portraits staged for the camera; some record ritualistic or cultural practices such as the charreada (rodeo); others capture their subjects unaware. The only color image depicts a bright red heart with angelic wings nailed to a pole - a local relic whose motif Ottinger has imported to objects in the center of the gallery.
      The photographs provide a loose contextual frame for the centerpiece - a shrine-like area fashioned out of found objects, some manipulated and some untouched. The colorful display incorporates fabric, feathers, crafts, and symbolic tokens from primarily Native American and Mexican cultures. On display is Ottinger's sketchbook for the project-a kind of storyboard that juxtaposes drawings with pictures, notes, and ethnographic postcards from the 1930s and 1940s. The central "altar" unifies the project, casting doubt on the assumed authenticity of the surrounding photographs.
      The scrapbook-like form of Faces, Found Objects, and Rough Riders is appropriate. The installation is in large part an account of Ottinger's exploration of San Antonio, a place rich with the creolization of German, Spanish, and Native American cultures. The project reveals not only how the medium of photography can simultaneously document and manipulate its subjects, but also the ways in which cultures change, influence, and borrow elements from one other. Through compelling juxtapositions, this work, like Ottinger's others, exposes the complexities in notions of cultural difference.

German artist finds beauty in charreadas
Web Posted: 08/08/2004 12:00 AM CDT

Dan R. Goddard
San Antonio Express-News

In her films, German artist Ulrike Ottinger often examines the tension between art and ethnography. Spending two months in San Antonio, she became fascinated with the heritage of Mexican American cowboys.
      She discovered the world of the Mexican rodeo, or charreada, which she has documented in her installation of large-scale photographs called "Faces, Found Objects and Rough Riders" at ArtPace.
      "I knew I would find something in the region, so I did not come with a specific project in mind," Ottinger said. "I like to do a lot of research, and I'm always interested in the origins of things, so naturally I was attracted to the Mexican rodeos."
She took more than 800 photographs of rodeos in San Antonio and Fort Worth. One whole wall of the gallery is covered with a huge blow-up of vaqueros roping a steer. Portraits of participants make up another nine smaller images. There's a young girl celebrating her birthday with money pinned to her blouse, and a man dressed in black who looks like a Fernando Botero painting come to life.
      Several more images are featured in a thick scrapbook, which resembles the note taking and story boarding that goes into making one of her films.
      "I talked to one person, who introduced me to the next, it was like a snowball," Ottinger said. "I would definitely be interested in making a film in San Antonio."
She's also created a shrine-like installation, lorded over by a stuffed longhorn head borrowed from the Buckhorn Saloon. Incorporating photographs and folk art, the installation also features feathers and other ornaments inspired by American Indian culture.
      ArtPace screened what is generally considered her best film, "Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia," which follows seven Western women on the trans-Siberian railroad who are captured by a Mongolian tribe ruled by women. Combining documentary footage with surrealistic studio scenes, the film is as far removed from Hollywood formulas as Ottinger could make it.
      Trained as an artist, she experimented in the 1960s with collage, performance and photography before moving into film in the 1970s. She's directed 18 films, which mostly have been shown in film festivals and museums.
      "Freak Orlando" was partly inspired by Todd Browning's "Freaks," while "Taiga" is an eight-hour documentary on Mongolia. "Exile Shanghai" documents the stories of six German, Austrian and Russian Jews whose lives intersect when they flee China.
      "I don't see the difference between a fictional film and a documentary because I always do both," Ottinger said. "I am mostly interested in recording disappearing traditions."

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