Which means "period, paragraph, Bluemli"
He had shown at the ICA in Boston - but I didn't see it. Gigi said he had paid a homeless person to come in and sleep in the gallery - so she didn't like his work and felt tainted by his probably using the homeless guy for his own benefit - so she wasn't into this show (yellow images above).
I, on the other hand, was into the show. It took me a second because at first sight, I was seeing gestural aspects as sloppy - which only works for me in a particular context. If it seems too non-art, too trying to get away with something... I don't know. There is a lot of crap out there that gets put over in a maschismo, young guy, brash kind of way....and to me it is overdone and maybe too easy.
But this show came over me in a subtle way.... the choice of colors together, the textures and lines...and the smell. The smell definitely drew me in.
It was probably the yellow paint covering the floors...the smell made me think of playdoh though. The texture and hues of colors in the show remind me of playdoh too - now that I think back on it. I wouldn't be shocked to learn that every color chosen for the show was based on official playdoh colors.
There was a wall of mugs that could have actually been made of playdoh instead of clay. But the smell was powerful (not quite overwhelming but not subtle) so I'm guessing it was the paint that covered the floor. The paint job was sloppy - it showed the black floor underneath in areas where the paint was thin or was unevenly distributed. It was sinister and curious in the way it bled from underneath the red velvet curtains when you first walked into the gallery.
I was especially moved when I saw the sculpture of the woman with the bowtie around her neck. (2nd row above). The colors, textures, lines, flatness mixed with pattern were extraordinary! She was like a half blown up doll or a half deflated human or a cartoon morphing into a human...you can get some of this from the photographs above - but not as much as being in her presence. Yes, I definitely love her. There is something dirty and scary about her (maybe use of material with that yellow smudgy ground)...
Here is a little bit of the press release that really struck me:
"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. "
Modern day sacraments all being grouped into one - putting hygiene and commerce and murder together into the same group - and then calling them sacraments! That is just delicious.
From Wikipedia:
A sacrament, as defined in Hexam's Concise Dictionary of Religion, is what Roman Catholics believe to be "a rite in which God is uniquely active."
In taking these words and applying it to his work - I am enthralled but also don't know what to say beyond this...
I took the other (non-yellow) images from around the web - they weren't part of this show. I wanted to show some of his line and color in his paintings...
Jerry Saltz , in a review he wrote of Kai's work in 2001, stated his obvious influence of Egon Schiele. Also from Saltz's article 'History Painting' in the Village Voice:
"Althoff has a lyrical gift for depicting what Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, director of the 1980 epic Our Hitler, speaking of Germanness, called "the monstrousness from which we are made." Dealing in the cultish and something very male, Althoff uses nostalgia, fairy tale, irony, and sentimentality as levers to update the past. Foregoing the clean, urban, German cosmopolitanism of Gursky & Co., Althoff depicts a mysterious, demonic past."
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