Kiki Kogelnik “Women”
Mitchell-Innes & Nash (534 W 26th St.)
[Image: Kiki Kogelnik "Marilyn" (1962) Oil and acrylic on canvas, 89 3/4 by 59 3/4 in. © Kiki Kogelnik Foundation.]
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Mitchell-Innes & Nash presents its second solo presentation of the work of Kiki Kogelnik. Women includes 10 paintings and 21 works on paper that date from 1962 to 1985.
Women focuses on Kogelnik’s exploration of the female body, its augmentation, fragmentation and fragility. The exhibition begins with Marilyn (1962), one of three homages she painted to her idol The figure’s voluminous proportions recall timeless symbols of fertility such as the Venus of Willendorf, while the green lingerie reinforces the body as an object of desire.
From 1966 to 1967 the artist created a series of drawings entitled Robots which utilized anatomical rubber stamps employed by doctors to make reports of diagnoses. Some show a form of utopian freedom as female figures blast off into space while others depict vulnerability, trauma and pain. In the 1970s Kogelnik embarked on a series of paintings inspired by fashion magazines that showed her subjects as both empowered and absurd as they perform their assigned roles.
In the series It Hurts, 1974-76, Kogelnik depicted a succession of women dressed in black who appear to be the subject of physical abuse conducted with a range of common house-hold items. By the 1980s she employed simplified representations of the female face which appear mask-like in a series of fixed expressions that evolve to become a motif that reoccurs throughout her late work and across a range of media. Kogelnik said towards the end of her life: “For me, the mask is nothing that takes place in front of the face but it is the face. It doesn’t conceal anything. It is it.”
Kiki Kogelnik (1935-1997) is currently included in: Cecilia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams, 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; Future Bodies from a Recent Past—Sculpture, Technology and the Body since the 1950s, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany; Amazons of Pop! Women Artists, Superheroines, Icons 1961-1973, Kunsthaus Graz, Austria and is the subject of Kiki Kogelnik: This is Your Life. An Archive Account at the Werner Berg Museum, Bleiburg, Austria. A retrospective exhibition beginning at the Kunstforum Wien, Vienna, Austria in February 2023 will tour to Kunstmuseum Brandts, Odense, Denmark and Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland.
Media
Schedule
from June 01, 2022 to July 08, 2022