Kai Althoff

Kai Althoff (born 1966 in Cologne) is a German visual artist, painter, and musician.

Life and work Kai Althoff was born in Cologne, West Germany, in February 1966.

Borrowing from moments of history, religious iconography, and counter-cultural movements, Althoff has been creating imaginary environments in which paintings, sculpture, drawing, video, and found objects commingle. Tapping a multitude of sources, from Germanic folk traditions to recent popular culture, from medieval and gothic religious imagery to early modern expressionism, Althoff's characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. His image bank and painterly style also draw on the past, especially early-20th-century German Expressionism, reconfigured by introducing collaged technique.

Much of Althoff's work is collaborative. For the 4th Berlin Biennale, Althoff and Lutz Braun created the site-specific installation Kolten Flynn, made up of three vitrines draped in red foil and full of a child's paintings, drawings, pens and other abandoned materials. Along with Yair Oelbaum, he conceived the dramatic play There we will be buried (2010), which debuted in 2011 at the Dixon Studio in Southend-on-Sea in Essex, England. For their U.S.-premiere performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the pair portrayed the show's main characters, Orpah and Lydia, two single mothers searching for a lost daughter. In Die Kleine Bushaltestelle (Gerüstbau) (Little Bus Stop [Scaffolding], 2012) Althoff performed alongside fellow artist Isa Genzken in a 70-minute absurdist comedy shot on home video.

Althoff's work has been included in several books listing contemporary artists, such as Art Now, published by Taschen. He is also a musician, releasing solo work under such monikers as Fanal, Engelhardt/Seef/Davis Coop. or Ashley's. He and Justus Köhncke perform as Subtle Tease, and he co-founded the band Workshop with Christoph Rath, Stefan Mohr and Stephan Abry.

Althoff is represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York, Galerie NEU in Berlin, and Michael Werner Gallery in London.

Exhibitions Althoff has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, including Kaiki, an exhibition of artist Kai Althoff's work selected by Saim Demircan at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea in 2011; Kai Althoff in 2008 at Vancouver Art Gallery; Kai Althoff: Ich meine es auf jeden fall schlecht mit ihnen in 2007 Kunsthalle Zürich; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Immo in 2004 at Simultanhalle, Cologne; Kai Althoff and Armin Kraemer in 2002 at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig; and Heetz, Nowak, Rehberger in 1997 at Museo de Arte Contemporanea USP, São Paulo. From 18 September 2016 through 22 January 2017, Kai Althoff: and then leave me to the common swifts was on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014, a solo exhibition, Kai Althoff, was presented at Michael Werner Gallery, London.

Current group exhibitions include Invisible Adversaries: the Marieluise Hessel Collection, Center for Curatorial Studies, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson and Identity Revisited, The Warehouse, Dallas in 2016; Avatar and Atavism: Outside the Avant-Garde, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf in 2015; Not Yet Titled, Museum Ludwig, Cologne in 2013.

Selected group exhibitions 1993: Aperto 93, Venice Biennale, Stand Schafhausen, Venice 1993: E, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 1995: Wild Walls, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 1996: Wunderbar, Kunstverein, Hamburg 1997: Time Out, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg 1997: Home Sweet Home, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 1998: Ars Viva 98/99, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig; Brandenburgische Kunstsammlungen, Cottbus; Portikus, Frankfurt 1999: German Open. Gegenwartskunst in Deutschland, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg 2001: Vom Eindruck zum Ausdruck, Grasslin Collection, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg 2001: Neue Welt, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt 2002: Drawing Now: Eight Propositions, Museum of Modern Art in New York City 2002: Chère Paintre, Liebe Maler, Dear Painter at the Pompidou Centre in Paris 2003: A Perilous Space at Magnani in London 2003: Lieber Maler, male mir and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfur t 2003: Venice Biennale, Museo Correr, Venice 2006: Painting in Tongues at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 2006: Heart of Darkness: Kai Althoff, Ellen Gallagher and EdgarCleijne, Thomas Hirschhorn at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2007: Make Your Own Life: Artists In & Out of Cologne, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami 2008: Life on Mars at Carnegie International, Pittsburgh 2009: Between Art and Life: The Painting and Sculpture Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco 2009: Compass in Hand: Selections from the Judith Rothschild Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009: Mapping the Studio: Artists from the Francois Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi, Venice 2009: Brandon Stosuy and Kai Althoff: Mirror Me, DISPATCH Projects, New York 2010: Beyond | In WNY, Alternating Currents, Albright Knox Triennial, New York 2010: At Home/Not at Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, New York 2012: A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance, Tate, London 2012: The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 2020 Kai Althoff goes with Bernard Leach, Whitechapel Gallery, London 2024 di costole, Nervi delle Volpi, Genoa

Contributions 2008: