Kiki Kogelnik

After initially working as an expressionist painter, Kogelnik evolved into a flamboyant practitioner of Pop Art, experimenting with collage and airbrush techniques, and with new materials such as vinyl along with traditional ones such as ceramics. In visionary fashion, she anticipated issues that are now more topical than ever: questions of gender and sexual identities, ethical concerns surrounding cutting-edge research, especially in medical diagnostics, rationalization and miniaturization through robotics.

The exhibition, curated by Cathérine Hug from the Kunsthaus Zürich in cooperation with Lisa Ortner-Kreil of the Kunstforum Wien, offers a comprehensive overview of Kogelnik’s multifaceted oeuvre via around 150 works from four decades of artistic production, some of them in very large formats. It reveals the art-historical importance of this pioneering figure, who worked primarily in New York but also in Vienna and Bleiburg, moving with consummate ease between familiar companions such as Sam Francis and Claes Oldenburg, and developing her distinct artistic language in relation to contemporaries such as Niki de Saint Phalle, Carolee Schneemann, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.