Art is divine

Painter in the feminine plural

by Micha Christos

KUNSTHAUS ZÜRICH

Switzerland

From March 22 to June 30, 2024

KIKI KOGELNIK

Retrospective

The Kunsthaus Zürich presents the first retrospective in Switzerland of Kiki Kogelnik, one of the leading figures of European Pop Art. Of Austrian origin, Kiki Kogelnik (1935-1997) was an artist ahead of her time.

For her, women should behave like true samurai and she herself acted in this way by adopting not only a very combative approach with materials, colors, but also social conventions. Indeed, in a visionary way, she anticipated the concerns at the heart of current events such as the question of gender and sexual identities or the ethical questions in cutting-edge research and robotization.

Initially an expressionist painter, Kogelnik became a flamboyant practitioner of Pop Art. She thus experimented with collage techniques, airbrushing and new materials such as vinyl or ceramic.

Kiki Kogelnik, Female Robot, 1964 Huile et acrylique sur toile, 122,6 x 183,4 cm Paris, Centre Pompidou - Musée national d‘art moderne -

The exhibition, curated by Cathérine Hug of Kunsthaus Zürich, in cooperation with Lisa Ortner-Kreil of Kunstforum Wien, offers a comprehensive overview of Kogelnik’s multifaceted oeuvre through around 150 works from four decades of artistic production, including some in very large formats.

This pioneering figure worked in New York but also and especially in Vienna and Bleiburg. Kiki developed a distinct artistic language in relation to her contemporaries Niki de Saint Phalle, Carole Schneemann, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Her emblematic “Hangings”, body silhouettes cut out of vinyl and draped on hangers, rub shoulders in the exhibition with her large works in glass and ceramic.

Kogelnik’s world is filled with human and animal figures. Its aesthetic is inspired by space travel, robotics and fashion.

To make an overly patriarchal society think, she uses with fascinating curiosity her own identities as an artist, mother and woman.

A femininity, an imprint, a vision of modernity

beyond her time..