Katherine Bernhardt

Katherine Bernhardt’s work takes the form of pattern paintings depicting a crowded array of everyday items that have been isolated from their original context. Typical motifs include fast food, cigarettes, household objects, or tropical elements such as turtles, toucans and exotic fruits as a result of her travels in Central America. Often combined with nostalgic characters such as Garfield, Pink Panther or E.T, Bernhardt’s brightly coloured canvases are a joyful testimony to her inner passions and personal obsessions. She is continuously adding new symbols to her eccentric universe— an exuberantly cluttered collection of contemporary icons. The artist is primarily motivated by a fascination with her everyday surroundings, and in giving it expression through colour and composition. She has often been praised for her distinctive technique, a complex fusion of process painting, Colour Field painting and street graffiti.

Katherine Bernhardt (b. 1975, St Louis, Missouri) lives and works in New York. Bernhardt’s recent solo exhibitions include Watermelon World, Mario Testino Museum, Lima (2018); Concrete Jungle Jungle Love, Lever House, New York, NY (2017); Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2017) and Contemporary Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO (2017).