Das Neue im Alten das Alte im Neuen

China in 1985 – an unknown and in spite of its vast expansion – hidden country in which the artist, filmmaker and photographer Ulrike Ottinger, after several years of diplomatic efforts, her film project CHINA. THE ARTS – EVERYDAY LIFE could realize. As in the "cinematic travel description" - so the subtitle - the photographs, which were prepared in preparation or parallel to the filming, are about closely observing people, their behavior and moods, about understanding and irritation, about the amazement at the different reality.
If an encounter of visual art and reality takes place during this first trip to China, the younger color photographs on the topic UNTER SCHNEE show a completely different facet from the versatile artistic work of Ulrike Ottinger. In the extraordinarily poetic images from northern Japan, tradition and modernity, past and present, reality and imagination find each other in a beguiling way.
Ulrike Ottinger's photographs do not explain. They see things, spaces and scenes in the consciousness of the outsider. All the more you can feel the travelers' joy of discovery, their fascination and great pleasure in the unknown in these pictures.
Press Release