Boston
Kai Althoff
ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
25 Harbor Shore Drive
May 26–September 6, 2004
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA Chicago)
220 East Chicago Avenue
September 23, 2004–January 16, 2005
Curated by Nicholas Baume
Tormented, sweet, angry, expressionistic, nostalgic, utterly contemporary—Kai Althoff’s eclectic artwork is all that and more. The Cologne-based artist is known on American shores mostly for watercolors and oils that evoke nineteenth-century German history, folklore, and Biedermeier genre scenes or, in darker moments, the baleful narratives of George Grosz. But Althoff’s first survey at a US museum includes over 140 works in a range of media from the past twenty-five years: paintings, photography, works on paper, installations, and videos, as well as audio presentation of his musical output. The artist-as-polymath also collaborated on the design for the catalogue, which includes essays by Clarissa Dalrymple and Diedrich Diederichsen.
Travels to the MCA, Chicago, Sept. 23–Jan. 16, 2005.