Opening
Tuesday, 14 April, 6–8 p.m.

Exhibition
15 April to 14 May 2026

Open daily from 11 am to 4 pm during Gallery Weekend from 1 to 3 May.

Film screenings
Paris Calligrammes; Germany/France 2019, running time: 129 mins, DCP, 1:1.85
Mon–Fri, 1.30 p.m.

Fasanenstraße 27, 10719 Berlin

Contact
events@grisebach.com

The exhibition is dedicated to the multifaceted body of work of one of the most significant voices in international auteur cinema, whilst also offering an intimate insight into Ulrike Ottinger’s artistic practice. At its heart are her shooting and production diaries, which go far beyond their functional role: each one unfolds as a standalone work of art within Ottinger’s universe. In them, images, texts, collages and visual notations combine to form dense compositions brimming with beauty, humour and intellectual precision – qualities that also characterise her films.

The presentation is complemented by a selection of textile works and tapestries that Ottinger created in the 2010s. These works take up motifs and visual languages from earlier painterly works and translate them into a new, material form. Threads, fabrics and structures become here vessels of memory and transformation – textures in both the literal and figurative sense.

Another key component of the exhibition is the daily screening of Ottinger’s film Paris Calligrammes (2019). In this work, the artist interweaves historical archive material with her own cinematic and artistic works to create a multi-layered sociogram of her time as a visual artist in 1960s Paris. Shaped by political upheavals, the city unfolds as a place caught between coming to terms with trauma and a utopian new beginning: from the aftermath of the Second World War through the Algerian War to the protests of 1968.

Ulrike Ottinger, born in 1942, began her career as a visual artist. Since the 1970s, she has been one of Germany’s most significant filmmakers and a pioneer of an aesthetically self-assured queer cinema. Her films not only transcend the boundaries between feature film, documentary and cinematic essay; they are also part of a complex Gesamtkunstwerk shaped by artistic, historical and ethnological interests. She works equally with painting, language, music, installation, costume, architecture and performance, with all these elements relating to one another in ever-changing constellations.

With “Textures”, Grisebach opens up a space in which these artistic threads intersect, overlap and form new connections – a tapestry of images, materials and stories that impressively brings to life the singularity of Ulrike Ottinger’s work.