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Lot Essay
‘But in the moment of making, the object you muster gains power over you …’ (Kai Althoff)
Executed in 2014, and included in the artist’s major 2016 solo exhibition and then leave me to the common swifts at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the present work is a mesmeric example of Kai Althoff’s fantastical idiom. It is one of a series of paintings with irregular shaped canvases constructed by the artist. To create its hexagonal form, a trapezoidal canvas painted in pale sepia tones is inset, puzzle-piece like, into the right-hand side of a larger canvas. Across the larger section of the painting, a medley of soft, diaphanous lilacs, blues and greens shimmer and ebb. Spectral, otherworldly figures emerge from the atmospheric brushwork as semicircles, separated by a thin pleat of canvas at the inward corner, coalesce along the edge of the image. The overall effect is surreal and ambiguous, where solid form seems capable of liquefying at any moment. The work’s singular form, argues art historian Rita Kersting, is one without art-historical precedent, offering a ‘startling, momentary vision, a dream image in universal space without gravity and time’ (R. Kersting, ‘Notes on Kai Althoff’s Works’, in and then leave me to the common swifts, exh. cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2016, p. 54).
Born in Cologne, Althoff now lives in New York, and his practice often explores the subcultures of both his home and adopted cities. Working across mediums, the artist has long been inspired by a range of cultural references, from religious iconography, Gothic and medieval motifs, and Germanic folk traditions to pop music and picture books. The shape of the present work recalls a medieval icon or altarpiece, while its delicate brushwork evokes the dreamlike tonalities of Symbolist and Intimist painting. Through his art, Althoff conjures whole worlds that beguile and immerse. In and leave me to the common swifts, he filled the gallery with works that spanned the whole of his practice across a range of media, creating a mise-en-scène that unveiled the innermost workings of his mind.
Althoff is difficult to pin down in part because of his far-reaching, atemporal approach. Growing up, he avoided art school, yet his practice shows an affinity for painting’s history, in particular the legacies of French Modernism: the present work echoes paintings by Edouard Vuillard that likewise use colour as a means of conveying mood and ambience. But rather than relying on direct quotation, Althoff’s oeuvre instead seems to represent the simultaneity and diffusion of memory, with multiple moments recollected at once. His art is evanescent and hallucinatory, creating a sense of wonder that asks its viewers to plunge headfirst into its maker’s heady, all-engulfing universe. As Laura Hoptman said to the artist, ‘Beauty in your work takes many forms’ (L. Hoptman, ‘Kai Althoff in Conversation with Laura Hotpman’, in ibid., p. 62).
Executed in 2014, and included in the artist’s major 2016 solo exhibition and then leave me to the common swifts at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the present work is a mesmeric example of Kai Althoff’s fantastical idiom. It is one of a series of paintings with irregular shaped canvases constructed by the artist. To create its hexagonal form, a trapezoidal canvas painted in pale sepia tones is inset, puzzle-piece like, into the right-hand side of a larger canvas. Across the larger section of the painting, a medley of soft, diaphanous lilacs, blues and greens shimmer and ebb. Spectral, otherworldly figures emerge from the atmospheric brushwork as semicircles, separated by a thin pleat of canvas at the inward corner, coalesce along the edge of the image. The overall effect is surreal and ambiguous, where solid form seems capable of liquefying at any moment. The work’s singular form, argues art historian Rita Kersting, is one without art-historical precedent, offering a ‘startling, momentary vision, a dream image in universal space without gravity and time’ (R. Kersting, ‘Notes on Kai Althoff’s Works’, in and then leave me to the common swifts, exh. cat. The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2016, p. 54).
Born in Cologne, Althoff now lives in New York, and his practice often explores the subcultures of both his home and adopted cities. Working across mediums, the artist has long been inspired by a range of cultural references, from religious iconography, Gothic and medieval motifs, and Germanic folk traditions to pop music and picture books. The shape of the present work recalls a medieval icon or altarpiece, while its delicate brushwork evokes the dreamlike tonalities of Symbolist and Intimist painting. Through his art, Althoff conjures whole worlds that beguile and immerse. In and leave me to the common swifts, he filled the gallery with works that spanned the whole of his practice across a range of media, creating a mise-en-scène that unveiled the innermost workings of his mind.
Althoff is difficult to pin down in part because of his far-reaching, atemporal approach. Growing up, he avoided art school, yet his practice shows an affinity for painting’s history, in particular the legacies of French Modernism: the present work echoes paintings by Edouard Vuillard that likewise use colour as a means of conveying mood and ambience. But rather than relying on direct quotation, Althoff’s oeuvre instead seems to represent the simultaneity and diffusion of memory, with multiple moments recollected at once. His art is evanescent and hallucinatory, creating a sense of wonder that asks its viewers to plunge headfirst into its maker’s heady, all-engulfing universe. As Laura Hoptman said to the artist, ‘Beauty in your work takes many forms’ (L. Hoptman, ‘Kai Althoff in Conversation with Laura Hotpman’, in ibid., p. 62).