David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by American artist Katherine Bernhardt (b. 1975) that will take place at the gallery’s location in Hong Kong. The works in this presentation focus on characters from the Japanese media franchise and global game sensation Pokémon, continuing to expand Bernhardt’s unique visual lexicon, which culls from an irreverent pop vernacular as well as her own life and the broader culture. Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art will be Bernhardt’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong and her second with David Zwirner.
Bernhardt first attracted notice in the early 2000s for her paintings of supermodels taken from the pages of fashion magazines such as Elle and Vogue. In the decade following, she began making pattern paintings that feature quotidian motifs—such as tacos, coffee makers, toilet paper, cigarettes, E.T., Garfield, Darth Vader, and the Pink Panther—in unlikely visual combinations within expansive fields of exuberant color. The compositional elements of Bernhardt’s paintings include palettes that allude to the tropical climes of Puerto Rico, references to the design and colouration of Moroccan rugs and West African Dutch wax fabrics, and influences ranging from Henri Matisse and the Pattern and Decoration movement to Peter Doig and Chris Ofili.
In this exhibition, Bernhardt continues her exploration of contemporary pop phenomena by focusing on the characters of Pokémon’s expansive universe Conceived by creator Satoshi Taijiri and art director Ken Sugimori and first launched by Nintendo in Japan in 1996, Pokémon was introduced to much fanfare in the United States in 1998 and has become one of the world’s largest cross-media franchises. Bernhardt previously debuted the Pokémon character Ditto, a pink-purple blob-like form with shape-shifting powers, in her 2022 exhibition Why is a mushroom growing in my shower? at David Zwirner London.
In Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art, the new works feature compositions culled from the Pokémon Trading Card Game; these “cards,” each featuring a different Pokémon, are rendered using the signature elements of Bernhardt’s ebullient style. For each painting, she delineates a loose border that frames the character represented and overlays the statistics and special abilities that distinguish their role within the game. Colors and lines bleed and pool together across their surfaces, revealing Bernhardt’s brisk and improvisational process. To create her works, the artist first draws on upright canvases with spray paint, after which she lays them on the floor to apply acrylic paint thinned out with water. Moving back and forth between several paintings at once, Bernhardt invites accident and chance into each of her dynamic compositions through her fast-paced actions.
By engaging the Pokémon ecosystem—premised on rarity—Bernhardt taps into a structure that corresponds to the high-low dichotomies of contemporary painting. In her attempt to “catch them all,” Bernhardt samples many of the eighteen Pokémon “types” that allow players to categorize characters according to their powers and capabilities. In Surfing Pikachu (2023), the titular canary-yellow critter originally created by artist Atsuko Nishida bursts across the painting in action. The cyan-colored Wobbuffet squeezes its eyes shut and opens its mouth wide against a bright pink backdrop. Mimikyu is the subject of Dummy Doll Jealous Eyes (2023), facing the viewer with floppy lopsided ears and a crooked smile. Bernhardt situates these characters in movement: the multiple arms of the rosy Chansey are activated mid-air as if running forth; a leporine Cinderace is poised for battle. The framework of these paintings seems to contain the characters’ constantly morphing bodies, which are ready to move and leap into our own spheres at any moment. In the monumentally scaled Yeti Gaming (2021), several Pikachus and amoebic Dittos share space with Teddiursa and household items such as a bottle of Elmer’s glue, a jug of Clorox bleach, and rolls of toilet paper—familiar motifs in Bernhardt’s oeuvre.
A monograph on Bernhardt is forthcoming from David Zwirner Books in October 2023.
Katherine Bernhardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2000.
In 2018, the solo exhibition Katherine Bernhardt: Watermelon World was on view at the Mario Testino Museum (MATE) in Lima, Peru. The previous year, in 2017, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, presented FOCUS: Katherine Bernhardt. Also in 2017, the artist painted a sixty-foot-long mural entitled XXL Superflat Pancake for the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. Bernhardt has created a permanent installation for Club Caribe, Cidra, Puerto Rico, and a pool painting at the Nautilus South Beach, Miami Beach (both 2015).
Her work has also been included in significant group exhibitions, such as We Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, Jewish Museum, New York (2020); Animal Farm, an exhibition curated by Sadie Laska at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017); NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Museum, Miami, which traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (2015–2017); and Bad Touch, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2002).
In 2022, David Zwirner, London presented an exhibition of new work by the artist, Katherine Bernhardt: why is a mushroom growing in my shower?
Work by the artist is found in prominent public and museum collections, including the Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Rubell Museum, Miami; and San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas. Bernhardt lives and works in St. Louis.
For all press inquiries, contact:
Victoria Kung vkung@davidzwirner.com
凱瑟琳·伯恩哈特：「虛構娃娃 羨慕之瞳 百變怪 皮卡丘 強化謎擬Q 嬉戲 伽勒爾烈焰馬 天秤角擊 體力值270 絕群壓軸 全圖」
2023年5月20日-8月5日
香港 | 中環皇後大道中80號 H Queen’s 5-6樓
伯恩哈特最早在千禧年之初斬獲眾人的關註，當時她以《Elle》和《Vogue服飾與美容》雜誌中的頁面為藍本描繪了許多時尚模特的畫作。此後的十年間，她開始創作「圖案繪畫」（pattern paintings），它們同等地參照了流行藝術以及戰後繪畫中某些模式的序列性重復。這些作品將日漸拓展的日常主題——包括墨西哥卷餅、咖啡機、廁紙、煙、外星人、加菲貓、達斯·維達（Darth Vader）和粉紅豹等——並置著呈現於平坦、色彩豐沛的開闊領域中，形成了讓人意料不到的視覺組合。伯恩哈特的繪畫充滿了豐富的構成性元素，包括讓人想起波多黎各熱帶氣候的色彩，對摩洛哥地毯和西非荷蘭式蠟質織物之設計與色彩的參考，以及從亨利·馬蒂斯（Henri Matisse）和「圖案與裝飾運動」（Pattern and Decoration movement）到彼得·多伊格（Peter Doig）和克裏斯·奧菲利（Chris Ofili）等人所帶來的影響。
在此次展覽中，伯恩哈特延續了她對當代流行文化現象的探索，她專註於表現的紛繁形象出自開闊的「寶可夢」的宇宙，它由創作者田尻智（Satoshi Taijiri）和藝術總監杉森建（Ken Sugimori）共同構思，並且在1996年由任天堂在日本首次推出，1998年大張旗鼓地引入美國，並且成為了世界上最大的跨媒體專營權之一。在她2022年舉辦於卓納畫廊倫敦空間的個展「為什麽我的浴室裏長出一個蘑菇？」上，伯恩哈特曾經首次展出了「寶可夢」中的「百變怪」，一個粉紫色、圓球狀的形象，具有變形的超能力。
在展覽「虛構娃娃 羨慕之瞳 百變怪 皮卡丘 強化謎擬Q 嬉戲 伽勒爾烈焰馬 天秤角擊 體力值270 絕群壓軸 全圖」中，這些新作品極富特點地呈現了從「寶可夢集換式卡牌遊戲」中選取的構圖。這些「卡牌」每一張都呈現了一個不同的「寶可夢」形象，用伯恩哈特情緒豐沛的獨特風格和標誌性的元素渲染而就。在每一幅畫中，藝術家都鬆散地標明邊界線以框定她要表現的形象，並將卡牌上的數據、特殊技能都疊置於畫面，以此分辨它們在遊戲中的角色。在畫面上，顏色與線條以「出血」版式呈現，並且如水窪般匯聚在一起，展露出伯恩哈特生氣勃勃而又隨性為之的創作方式。為了創作這些作品，藝術家會先用噴漆在直立的布面上作畫，隨後將之平放在地面，塗上用水稀釋過的丙烯顏料。伯恩哈特會同時幾幅畫的創作，在它們之間來回跳躍，通過節奏輕快的舉動將偶然與隨機的因素引入每一幅作品。
自成體系的「寶可夢」以稀缺性為前提，而通過對它的深入，伯恩哈特挖掘出了一個與當代繪畫之高雅低俗二分法相對應的結構。伯恩哈特試圖「把它們全收服」，她采樣了十八種寶可夢的「屬性」，這讓玩家可以按照不同威力及性能對角色進行分類。在《沖浪皮卡丘》（2023）中，標題所示的鮮黃色小精靈在動態中猛然出現於畫面，這個形象最早由藝術家西田敦子（Atsuko Nishida）所創作。青綠色、擠眉弄眼的《果然翁》（2021），在明亮的粉紅色背景前張大嘴巴。謎擬Q是作品《虛構娃娃 羨慕之瞳》（2023）中的主角，它帶著耷拉下垂的耳朵和一個歪歪扭扭的微笑面朝著觀眾。伯恩哈特將這些形象置於動態之中：玫瑰色的吉利蛋的數條手臂被激活著呈現於半空，仿佛它正在向前跑動；外形類似野兔的閃焰王牌擺出了準備戰鬥的姿勢。這些繪畫的參照標準表現了寶可夢角色不斷變形的身體，它們似乎準備好了隨時移動或跳躍到我們所在的世界裏。在有如紀念碑的大尺幅作品《雪怪遊戲店》（2021）中，數個皮卡丘以及阿米巴蟲般的百變怪與熊寶寶和各種日用物品共享同一片空間，比如一瓶牛頭牌膠水、一罐高樂氏漂白劑和幾卷衛生紙——它們都是伯恩哈特創作中的常見主題。
一本有關伯恩哈特的專著圖冊，將在2023年10月由卓納圖書出版。
凱瑟琳·伯恩哈特（Katherine Bernhardt，1975年生）出生於密蘇裏州聖路易斯，她在1998年獲得了芝加哥藝術學院的BFA純藝術學士學位，並在2000年獲得了紐約視覺藝術學院的MFA純藝術碩士學位。
2018年，藝術家的個展「凱瑟琳·伯恩哈特：西瓜世界」在秘魯利馬的MATE馬裏奧·泰斯蒂諾博物館舉行。此前的2017年，位於德州的沃斯堡現代藝術博物館為其呈現了「『聚焦』項目：凱瑟琳·伯恩哈特」。同樣是在2017年，藝術家為聖路易斯當代藝術博物館創作了一幅長達60英尺（合約18.3米）的壁畫作品，題為《超大號超扁平煎餅》（XXL Superflat Pancake）。2015年，伯恩哈特還為波多黎各錫德拉的「加勒比俱樂部」機構創作了一件永久裝置，並為邁阿密海灘的鸚鵡螺南海灘創作了一件泳池繪畫作品。
她的作品曾被囊括到諸多重要的群展中，包括喬納森·霍洛維茨（Jonathan Horowitz）在紐約猶太博物館的展覽「我們為建立一個自由的世界而戰：一場展覽」（2020）；由薩迪·拉斯卡（Sadie Laska）在康涅狄格州格林威治的布蘭特基金會藝術研究中心策劃的「動物農場」（2017）；邁阿密盧貝爾博物館盧貝爾家族收藏基金會的「無人之地：來自盧貝爾家族收藏基金會的女性藝術家們」，展覽隨後巡展至華盛頓特區的美國國家女性藝術博物館（2015-2017）；以及在芝加哥烏克蘭現代藝術機構舉辦的「壞觸碰」（2002）等。
2022年，卓納畫廊倫敦空間呈現了藝術家的全新作品個展「凱瑟琳·伯恩哈特：為什麽我的浴室裏長出一個蘑菇？」
藝術家的作品被珍藏在著名的公共收藏及博物館館藏中，包括：康涅狄格州格林威治的布蘭特基金會藝術研究中心、匹茲堡的卡內基藝術博物館、意大利都靈的山德雷托·雷·雷包登戈基金會、亞特蘭大的海氏藝術博物館、華盛頓特區的赫希洪博物館和雕塑園、田納西州的諾克斯維爾藝術博物館、緬因州的波特蘭藝術博物館、邁阿密的盧貝爾博物館，以及德州的聖安東尼奧藝術博物館等。伯恩哈特現生活工作於聖路易斯。
媒體垂詢：
龔凱欣 Victoria Kung vkung@davidzwirner.com