Kai Althoff, Untitled (2015), Courtesy the Cranford Collection, London © Kai Althoff

Situated atop the Museum of Modern Art, Kai Althoff’s current survey exhibition, and then leave me to the common swifts (und dann überlasst mich den Mauerseglern), first presents itself as an elaborate visual pun, turning the sixth floor of the museum into a veritable attic space for the artist’s body of watercolors, drawings and sculpture, each shown alongside other objects in an approach to the work that opens new, and often disturbing, narratives in the progression and aesthetic explorations in the artist’s career.

Kai Althoff, and then leave me to the common swifts (Installation View), Courtesy MoMA, Photograph © Kai Althoff

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Installation shot. All images courtesy of Gallery Buchholz Berlin.

German artist Isa Genzken presents a new constellation of works Hallelujah at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, Germany. Genzken works primarily in sculpture but is known to also employ other media such as film, photography, works on paper, and collage in her works. Her practice, known for drawing on the legacy of Minimalism, often involves a critical dialogue with Modernist architecture as well as contemporary culture.

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Kai Althoff, Punkt, Absatz, Blümli (period, paragraph, Blümli) (2011). All images via Gladstone Gallery

Kai Althoff‘s most recent effort Punkt, Absatz, Blümli (period, paragraph, Blümli), currently on view at Barbara Gladstone, consists of work in all media yet reads as one cohesive installation.  Partitioned off with a lush red velvet curtain, the installation interrogates the evocative, highly intimate quality of private spaces.  Althoff’s facility with working in multimedia is highlighted in Punkt, which features an artificial ceiling, handmade carpet and life-sized paper-mâché figures, as well as the artist’s iconic two-dimensional painted works. The critic Linda Yablonsky aptly equates the installation to “a walk-in painting.“

More text and images after the jump…

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