Kai Althoff’s Punkt, Absatz, Bluemli (period, paragraph, Bluemli) at Gladstone Gallery

NEW YORK, NY.- Someone who saw the work said the following: “The images herein depict mundane and fantastic situations enacted by human and animal souls, figures ill and ecstatic about the situations they have been granted. Some figures cannot help but stare or grab at each other, while others step on their companions, soiling any hope of communion. Their wills, like twisted wicks, burn distinct but unified fires. They are composed of several species but they cannot tell themselves apart, awakening loathsome blood in the veins of each body. With sycophantic excitement they conduct every modern day sacrament—murder, construction, commerce, and hygiene (among others). Yet their tangled wills act not in the name of altruism or holiness, but from their everlasting yearning for life’s sweet spots and the age-old wish to dissociate from (or marry) all carnal cravings. These acts set the figures at odds with their surroundings, as flowers ill through winter’s scour.”

Kai Althoff was born in Cologne, Germany in 1966. Althoff has been the subject of solo exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad including: Vancouver Art Gallery; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Kunsthalle Zürich; and Simultanhalle, Cologne. His work has also appeared in many group shows at institutions including: CCS Bard, Hessel Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. Althoff was included in “Of Mice and Men,” the 2006 Berlin Biennial. He was most recently included in “Beyond/In Western New York 2010: Alternating Currents” at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

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