Katherine Bernhardt

Slices of watermelon, Nike swooshes, bug-eyed Garfields, rolls of toilet paper, and Coke bottles, outlined in spray paint and filled in with drippy areas of color—no one could accuse this talented painter of holding back. Bernhardt renders her boisterous images with pictographic consistency and appealingly messy abandon. “Laundry Day” is the monochromatic outlier: it shows a Day-Glo Pink Panther, with tube socks floating around him, disappearing into a background of muddied fuchsia. As funny, and even festive, as the paintings are, look with care and you’ll notice their critical streak. In “Dole + Darth Vader,” bananas hover around the “Star Wars” villain—part stormtrooper commander, part Carmen Miranda. 

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