Okka-Esther Hungerbühler

Die Faule Nuss

Places Where Things Seem to Work Differently

Okka-Esther Hungerbühler (b. Bonn, 1988; lives and works in Berlin) creates microcosmic dreamscapes sprung from a burgeoning pictorial imagination. The paintings unfold concrete narrative details and stories that the sculptures dismantle in gestures packing a punch. In the exhibition space, Hungerbühler, who studied in Thomas Zipp’s master class, arranges her work to conjure up scenic moments; the sculptures, some of them vaguely robotic, seem to have anticipated the viewer’s response and interact with the paintings. The question to which her hazy characters and creatural sceneries appear to frame a response is this: how can one still tell fantastic, sad, and savage stories today? The publication Die Faule Nuss presents Hungerbühler’s sculptures in characteristic conjunction with her paintings, a blend of figuration and abstraction that recalls Pop art and comic strips. With an essay by Maurin Dietrich and a foreword by Brigitte Hausmann.