Kati Gegenheimer – The American Scholar

Painter Kati Gegenheimer doesn’t draw back from the heartfelt or “cringe.” In reality, “that’s exactly where I often hope to land,” she says, “making work that is about love and care, and using energy to sustain those things, even when it seems out of fashion.” Gegenheimer, who studied portray and printmaking at Yale, initially wished to be a journalist, however her fascination with vibrant hues and numerous visible media led her to artwork as an alternative. “My impulse to record feels really close to what I do now in painting, just a different form,” she says. “I was always trying to find [formats that] … hold information, to hold memory, to keep records, and to then be able to look back, understand, and reflect.” Her works, saturated with vibrant colours, are supposed to evoke childhood recollections, pleasure, or different sturdy reactions. Gegenheimer is continually pushing herself to play with new, daring pigments—she even painted her first studio a “mermaid teal,” each to withstand succumbing to the usual “white cube” gallery area, and to problem herself to create work that might stand out towards their environment. Now, her first solo museum exhibition, We’ve Only Just Begun, is on show on the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, exploring snapshots in time and new beginnings by means of riotous, colourful work hanging on (and in some circumstances painted straight onto) the partitions.

The title of the exhibition comes from the Carpenters music of the identical identify. Gegenheimer herself will not be a diehard fan of the duo, however she considers the music “to be almost painfully earnest in a way that I find really special.” The titular portray, among the many first that viewers see upon getting into the area, is of some bars of sheet music in bubblegum-pink and white, set towards swirling chartreuse and teal iconography. The piece took Gegenheimer virtually three years to finish, a testomony to the worth of beginning over, she says, and the hopefulness and optimism that underpins her artwork. In addition to the works displayed on the partitions, Gegenheimer painted rainbow stripes on the baseboards of the room, a nod to the Romanesque-inspired structure of the historic constructing (striping, usually within the type of alternating purple brick and white stone, is a trademark of excessive Romanesque structure), and added chartreuse paneling to create visible concord all through the area. The result’s a room the place pleasure virtually jumps off the canvas and into the bodily area itself, the place Gegenheimer hopes guests really feel their moods change as quickly as they stroll in. A gaggle of Girl Scouts attended the opening, she recounts, “and just seeing these Brownies look around and be enthused about the colors in the show was so exciting to me. It’s something I’ll probably never forget.”