Kai Althoff

Kai Althoff is a German visual artist and musician born in 1966 in Cologne. Best known for his figurative paintings that seem to portray an accessible quotidian image yet remain resolutely personal and idiosyncratic, Althoff creates paintings with an immediate presence and elegance. Across two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and even installation art, his creative expression explores the complex range of emotions embedded in his rich literary imagination.

Inspired by diverse influences such as the Japanese art of ukiyo-e, traditional German folklore, and artistic predecessors such as Gustav Klimt or Marc Chagall, Althoff paints dream-like scenes shrouded in mysterious possible narratives. While the figures seem to provide a gateway for the viewer to understand the painting, the artist instead places them in a strange, liminal terrain that resists interpretation or explanation. As if to reward close inspection, his rich, textual interplay of paint and luminous handling of color is evocative of a feeling that is at once personal and universal.

Over the course of his celebrated career, Althoff has found his works notably featured in solo exhibitions such as Kai Althoff: and then leave me to the common swifts at the Museum of Modern Art New York and Kai kein Respekt at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, while being a part of group exhibitions at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Warehouse, Dallas; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kunsthalle Bern; and more. His works are collected by remarkable institutional collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.