KAI ALTHOFF (b. 1966) WINTER aluminum foil,

Provenance
Galerie Christian Nagel, COLOGNE
Marc Jancou Fine Art, NEW YORK

Exhibited
BOSTON, Institute of Contemporary Art, May 26-September 6, 2004 and CHICAGO, Museum of Contemporary Art, September 23, 2004 January 16, 2005, KAI KEIN RESPECT (KAI NO RESPECT), p. 119, no. 131
Diozesanmuseum Freising, JUNGE KUNST IM DIOZESANMUSEUM FREISING: KAI ALTHOFF UND ABEL AUER, February 10-April 6, 2003

Literature
N. Baume, ed., KAI KEIN RESPECT (KAI NO RESPECT), BOSTON and MIAMI BEACH, 2004, p. 119, no. 131

Kai Althoff's artistic landscape is a powerful and mysterious weave of conflicting feelings between the ecstasy of an inner, obscure and protected world of dreams and nightmares, desires and sins, and the frenzy of the outside social and political world. His intense body of work spans installation art to literary writing, painting to performance, music to poetry in a way that creates imaginativeworlds of thematic complexity and emotional resonance in his oeuvre. Bringing these media together in a provocative collision, Althoff's paintings and works on paper from the last few years in particular, display traces of art historical "expressionisms" including those by Schiele, Klimt, Ensor, Nolde, Polke, Kippenberger, and even early Northern Renaissance painting. Althoff utilizes the resources of earlier expressionisms to establish his own vocabulary of a sophisticated understanding of visual culture and history, which are both "high" and "low."

IT MIGHT BE POSSIBLE TO TRACE ALTHOFF'S FOCUS ON THE VAGARIES OF MEMORY, HISTORY, AND SUBCULTURAL STYLE TO HIS PARALLEL LIFE AS A MUSICIAN IN THE EXPERIMENTAL COLOGNE BAND WORKSHOP. WELL VERSED IN AN ARRAY OF MUSICAL INFLUENCES INCLUDING THE BEATLES, REGGAE, AND THE SMITHS, WORKSHOP'S SONGS HAVE BEEN DESCRIBED AS TAPPING INTO THE MÉLANGE OF FICTION AND HISTORICAL FACT THAT REMEMBRANCES OF CHILDHOOD EVOKE IN OUR PSYCHES. THIS ECLECTIC RANGE OF CULTURAL REFERENCES AND FOCUS ON THE CONVERGENCE OF PERSONAL MEMORY AND SOCIAL HISTORY HAS A PARALLEL MANIFESTATION IN ALTHOFF'S VISUAL WORLDS, WHICH EMPLOY AN AESTHETIC PRACTICE GIRDED WITH THE CONCEPTION OF STYLE AS A WEAPON OF RESISTANCE. V. Breuvart, ed., VITAMIN P, LONDON, 2002, p. 32.

Althoff's paintings are eerily beautiful, displaying a delicate mastery of line, color and form, while their subjects veer toward the strange and macabre. Their highly varnished surfaces seductively exude a quaint, old-fashioned air that is underscored by the characters he borrows from German folklore and history, while simultaneously luring viewers into their web of interwoven imagery. Whether figurative or abstract, photographed or drawn, painted or sewn, every image and object in Althoff's art has its story. In fact, the stories around one work may have multiple layers and alternate scenarios, making it hard to attach any explicit reading of the artist's intention. In WINTER, Althoff depicts a mysterious collage of images in a compelling mélange, all contained by a pearlized lacquered coat. The Nolde inspired face in the bottom half of the canvas, seems to engage the viewer in an illusory and haunting gaze frozen with pensive terror, while the cryptic scene next to it of a man lurching over the body of a child conveys an almost demonic occurrence. The geometric pattern above this scene is highlighted by two obscure collaged images of a lumber worker in the center of the canvas, and a man at the top left; images which at first seem unconnected, and yet Althoff interweaves them in a manner which most certainly has a deeper meaning. Althoff's WINTER simultaneously conveys a nostalgia for fairy tale, coupled with an almost demonic undertone and an attachment to "Germaneness." The seductive lacquered surface juxtaposed with the macabre undertone of the painting, ultimately serves to enchant and captivate the viewer, who at once becomes submerged into the painting's many layers of meaning and visual passion. The painting offers a powerful insight into an intense and traumatic world of everyday ritual and sacrifice colored by a seeming desire and violence, which ultimately enthralls the viewer and thus renders Althoff's WINTER to come alive.