Jennie Ottinger: Bad Luck, Dutch. Your Face is on the Tea Towels: the Princess Series

Rebecca Camacho Presents is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by San Francisco-based artist Jennie Ottinger. Ottinger’s abstract realist paintings investigate historical events through a contemporary feminist eye. With figures at once eerily distorted and pleasantly recognizable, Ottinger documents gendered social norms and investigates the power-holders who benefit from people's compliance within the confines of standardized acceptability.

With past subjects ranging from Greek letter organizations to Jane Eyre to country clubs to revolutionary political landscapes, Ottinger’s newest work centers on Diana, Princess of Wales. Titled Bad Luck, Dutch. Your Face is on the Tea Towels: the Princess Series, a reference to a conversation between Lady Diana Spencer and her sisters on the eve of Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles where she expressed nuptial doubts and her sisters encouraged her to proceed, Ottinger’s solo debut at the gallery recreates public documentation of Princess Diana from her media arrival as Charles’s young girlfriend in 1980 through her death in 1997. Sourced from paparazzi images as well as officially released photos, Ottinger creates poignant portraits chronicling Diana’s everyday experiences.

Installed chronologically the exhibition documents the visual transformation of a singular woman while also engaging a larger group discourse of power dynamics and power distance. In a practice where omission is as important as inclusion, Ottinger’s paintings materialize through a dual process of exposure and erasure. Rendering some figures in focused detail while leaving others faceless, in broad strokes, Ottinger enacts a nuanced dialogue on the complexities of perception and belonging. Often backgrounds and edges emerge unadorned, creating a hierarchy of focus and accentuating isolation. With shifting emotional temperament from panel to panel, Ottinger’s record of Diana’s evolution in the public eye mirrors the in v. out commentary of her as visual subject matter; a voyeuristic analysis of social access and deprivation.