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Serious Snacks Going Down

Photos c/o Grande Vista

“Why so serious”, Cathrin Ulikowski asked herself during her stay at the Grande Vista artist-in-residence program whilst facing the challenge of her own expectations towards Los Angeles, the cradle of all pop culture dreams.

Embracing the visual world of movies, comic books and fashion magazines, Cathrin‘s main body of work tries to capture the moment of the viewer’s identification with the viewed subject. Almost inactive figures leave room for one’s own imagination of the action to come, which might be no action at all, but a frozen moment of eternal possibilities. There is a distinct fascination with the big city, a melancholic obsession the artist counterbalances with a almost colouring-book style, reducing the painter’s gesture to adding color to the drawn scenery.

The title paraphrases ”Why aren’t you smiling?”, a catcall demanding women to be amicable – instead, Cathrin chose movie stills of crying women, supplementing her own depictions of action heroines. Drawing on the prints, a playful connection to art history is established, leading to the center piece of the show: The Creation of Adam with a little twist.