June 5, 2025
Katherine Bernhardt
Sidewalk Chalk
David Zwirner Gallery
April 11 - June 14, 2025
Katherine Bernhardt
Pop Art meets Expressionism could be a description of Katherine Bernhardt's paintings. They are big. They are bright. They are gestural. They are filled with icons from popular culture like the "Pink Panther" or "Garfield" the cat, as well as everyday household items like sticks of butter or Lucky Charms. Over the last twenty years, Bernhardt's imagery has transitioned from paintings of super models culled from fashion magazines like Elle and Vogue to paintings filled with uneven grids of random objects like Sharpies, cigarettes, pieces of fruit and bottles of Windex becoming colorful arrays across her canvases.
Taking her son's collection of Pokémon cards as a point of departure in 2023, Bernhardt modified the commercially produced product to create her own interpretations — large spray paint and acrylic works that are filled with clunky captions and frenetic gestures that both reference and poke fun at the originals.
In Sidewalk Chalk she continues to indulge in aggressive mark-making by using wide brushes and a colorful palette that reference the exhibitions title. The works are dramatic, familiar and unabashedly silly. In It's Butter (all works 2024), Bernhardt messily paints a huge image of the cartoon character "Garfield" against a washy pink background. Behind the cat's outstretched arms are two oversized wrapped sticks of butter placed vertically like columns or even skyscrapers. "Garfield" is rendered with spray painted orange and black lines, as well as brushed red marks that appear like veins inside his body.
Five wrapped sticks of light yellow butter with pink outlines float in front of and behind the head and upper body of "The Pink Panther" in Butter Butter Butter Butter Butter. Fluttering in the composition and outlined in hot pink are light blue diamonds and tri-color rainbows — items found in Lucky Charms cereal. His bright yellow eyes aglow, "The Pink Panther" looks dazzled.
"Cookie Monster" makes an appearance in two paintings: Taste and Gulp. "Cookie Monster" was the beloved Muppet character on "Sesame Street" known for devouring cookies, though he would consume just about anything edible or not. Once again, Bernhardt distorts the iconic representation, depicting just his head with googly eyes and wide open mouth stuffed with sticks of butter in Taste, or filled with jars of "Vaseline," tooth brushes and tubes of "Crest" squirting multi-colored paste into the monster's mouth in the painting Gulp.
At first glance it is easy to dismiss Bernhardt's brightly colored paintings as enlarged and over exaggerated doodles, yet they continue to resonate. While she retains the original colors and the simple shapes of these well known characters from popular culture and the cartoon world, she removes their context and places them in nondescript confined spaces while juxtaposing them with incongruous, everyday objects so the characters become defamiliarized. The paintings are strange amalgamations of disparate "things" that are memorable and visually engaging. Bernhardt is not a naive painter and although there might be art historical references in the work, they are subsumed by her barebones approach, bright palette and gestural improvisation. Whether she is celebrating or critiquing contemporary consumer culture, her paintings are bombastic nods to the things she seems to love.
Sidewalk Chalk
David Zwirner Gallery
April 11 - June 14, 2025
Katherine Bernhardt
Pop Art meets Expressionism could be a description of Katherine Bernhardt's paintings. They are big. They are bright. They are gestural. They are filled with icons from popular culture like the "Pink Panther" or "Garfield" the cat, as well as everyday household items like sticks of butter or Lucky Charms. Over the last twenty years, Bernhardt's imagery has transitioned from paintings of super models culled from fashion magazines like Elle and Vogue to paintings filled with uneven grids of random objects like Sharpies, cigarettes, pieces of fruit and bottles of Windex becoming colorful arrays across her canvases.
Taking her son's collection of Pokémon cards as a point of departure in 2023, Bernhardt modified the commercially produced product to create her own interpretations — large spray paint and acrylic works that are filled with clunky captions and frenetic gestures that both reference and poke fun at the originals.
In Sidewalk Chalk she continues to indulge in aggressive mark-making by using wide brushes and a colorful palette that reference the exhibitions title. The works are dramatic, familiar and unabashedly silly. In It's Butter (all works 2024), Bernhardt messily paints a huge image of the cartoon character "Garfield" against a washy pink background. Behind the cat's outstretched arms are two oversized wrapped sticks of butter placed vertically like columns or even skyscrapers. "Garfield" is rendered with spray painted orange and black lines, as well as brushed red marks that appear like veins inside his body.
Five wrapped sticks of light yellow butter with pink outlines float in front of and behind the head and upper body of "The Pink Panther" in Butter Butter Butter Butter Butter. Fluttering in the composition and outlined in hot pink are light blue diamonds and tri-color rainbows — items found in Lucky Charms cereal. His bright yellow eyes aglow, "The Pink Panther" looks dazzled.
"Cookie Monster" makes an appearance in two paintings: Taste and Gulp. "Cookie Monster" was the beloved Muppet character on "Sesame Street" known for devouring cookies, though he would consume just about anything edible or not. Once again, Bernhardt distorts the iconic representation, depicting just his head with googly eyes and wide open mouth stuffed with sticks of butter in Taste, or filled with jars of "Vaseline," tooth brushes and tubes of "Crest" squirting multi-colored paste into the monster's mouth in the painting Gulp.
At first glance it is easy to dismiss Bernhardt's brightly colored paintings as enlarged and over exaggerated doodles, yet they continue to resonate. While she retains the original colors and the simple shapes of these well known characters from popular culture and the cartoon world, she removes their context and places them in nondescript confined spaces while juxtaposing them with incongruous, everyday objects so the characters become defamiliarized. The paintings are strange amalgamations of disparate "things" that are memorable and visually engaging. Bernhardt is not a naive painter and although there might be art historical references in the work, they are subsumed by her barebones approach, bright palette and gestural improvisation. Whether she is celebrating or critiquing contemporary consumer culture, her paintings are bombastic nods to the things she seems to love.