Kai Althoff
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Kai Althoff (born 1966, Cologne, Germany) is an artist based in Cologne.
Althoff has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including the 2004 Venice Biennale [1], “Drawing Now” at the Museum of Modern Art [2] in New York, “Chère Paintre, Liebe Maler, Dear Painter” at the Pompidou Centre [3] in Paris and “A Perilous Space” at Magnani [4] in London. He is represented by Gladstone Gallery [5] in New York, Gabriele Senn [6] in Vienna, Daniel Bucholz [7] in Cologne and Galerie NEU [8] in Berlin.
Kai Althoff is a painter dealing with the immense weight of his country’s fraught history through sinister narrative, art historical borrowing and a male-centric cast of characters. Althoff’s paintings are the result of his self-taught skill (he did not attend art school) and a keen knowledge of Germany’s artistic and social past. Althoff’s work is never overtly political or preachy, its power lies in the subtleness with which Althoff involves the viewer in the often questionable scenarios he depicts. By staying on the vague side of narrative, Althoff is able to make his concerns about the lessons of history all the more affecting as his work slowly reveals its position to the viewer. A creeping sense of despair, horror or disgust is usually lurking in the background of Althoff’s scenes of – mostly – men engaging in various acts, barbaric or otherwise, but each rendered with the same moral weight. Althoff does not indulge in conventional divisions between so-called ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in his paintings and his work highlights the ease with which these things are interchanged seemingly without much thought.
