Conduit Gallery is honored to present She Never Said That, a solo exhibition of recent work by San Francisco-based artist Jennie Ottinger.

Jennie Ottinger’s work attempts to capture that moment immediately before or after a pivotal event, the tension in that fleeting period of silence and stillness. The unfinished quality lends to the uneasy stillness by making them seem interrupted, as if something sudden and significant occurred.

Ottinger is currently going through a princess phase. She is collecting stories of women who were maligned by history which applies to basically any high-profile woman throughout time. Princesses were pawns used to build dynastic power and in many cases, they were scapegoats, in Marie Antoinette’s case, for all the poverty in all of France and also the downfall of the French monarchy. This applies not just to princesses but any strong woman with proximity to power, like Yoko Ono, Meghan Markel, Anne Boleyn, like Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna who never said “Let them eat cake” and never commissioned a $15 Million (in our current valuation) necklace then refused to pay, and never abused her children. She did what she was bred to do: have babies and look fabulous.

She Never Said That is a series of historically referenced paintings of Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna (AKA Maria Antoinette).

Jennie Ottinger was raised in Massachusetts and therefore knows a lot about the Revolutionary war and cranberries. Just kidding. She doesn’t know anything about either of those things. She does know a lot about princesses though and loves to paint them, among other things. She holds a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, a BA in Art History from the University of the Pacific and received an MFA from Mills College in May of 2008. She has exhibited extensively in the Bay Area as well as in New York, London, Dallas, and LA. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, It’s Nice That, and other places that made her happy. She lives in San Francisco.