#VayaConDios - Canada Online Viewing Room

Canada

February 16, 2021 - March 20, 2021

60 Lispenard Street

P: 212 925 4631

New York, NY

10013

canadanewyork.com

#VayaConDios

Katherine

Bernhardt

Detail of Katherine outdoor patio in Guatemala, featuring 'Bird of Paradise with Gel', 2020

Canada is pleased to present '#VayaConDios', an online exhibition of new works on paper by Katherine Bernhardt. During the artist's four-month-long stay in Guatemala, a visit unexpectedly prolonged due to strict lockdown measures during the global pandemic, Katherine ventured through old downtown Antigua. Local fauna, wildlife, textiles, and brands became the newest subjects of Bernhardt's paintings, adding to the artist's ever-growing lexicon. She depicts hand sanitizer and Clorox–realities of our new normal– as colorful objects of pop-cultural curiosity.

Katherine Bernhardt (b. 1975, St. Louis, MO) is known for brightly-colored, large-scale paintings that depict everyday objects and characters informally inventive compositions. She combines imagery from pop culture and contemporary life, including E.T., Garfield, Nike swooshes, Pink Panther, Clorox, Toucans, cigarettes, Xanax, Dark Vader, Mickey Mouse, Scotch tape, Coca-Cola bottles, watermelon, avocadoes, coconuts, and toilet paper. Bernhardt paints these motifs in an all-over pattern harnessing aerosol spray's straightforward immediacy combined with fluid, chromatic acrylic that pools and mixes directly on the canvas. She draws no hierarchy between her subject matter, which comes from her travels, or visits to the fruit stand or 99-cent store. Her early paintings depicted supermodels from fashion magazines, Swatch watches, and Moroccan carpets. Bernhardt spent over twenty years painting in Brooklyn before relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, in 2019.

Bernhardt is represented by Canada, New York, Xavier Hufkens, Belgium, and Carl Freedman, London and has been the subject of institutional shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, TX; the Contemporary Museum of Art, St. Louis; and Art OMI, Ghent, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include Done with Xanax, Canada, New York (2020), VOODOO MAYO KETCHUP, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, UK (2020), MayoKetchup, Embajada, San Juan, PR, (2020); Big in Japan, NANZUKA, Tokya, Japan (2019), Garfield on Scotch Tape, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, (2019); Green, CANADA, NY (2018); Watermelon World, Mario Testino Museum, Lima, Peru (2018); Concrete Jungle Love, Lever House, New York (2017). Bernhardt's paintings are included in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C; the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; The San Antonio Museum in San Antonio, TX; the Rubell Collection, Miami; the Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT; and the Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT. Bernhardt has been the subject of many books including Katherine Bernhardt (2017); Tombouctou 52 Jours (2010), The Magnificent Excess Of Snoop Dogg (2008), among others. She is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.