Kiki Kogelnik: I have seen the future!

All dreams are in us prophetic

Rockets, cannons, body fragments, collages, stencils, spray paints, crazy colours - they characterise the pictorial worlds of Kiki Kogelnik, who was born in Graz in 1935. Having grown up in Carinthia, she moved to the USA in 1961 after her time at the Vienna Academy, settling in New York around 1962. And so it is no coincidence that her work reflects the canon of East Coast pop of her male colleagues of the time. However, in contrast to their material games or pronounced brand-festivalism, the young Austrian woman was committed to expanding consciousness and was very critical of the connection between a love of technology and a conquering mentality in pop from the very beginning. This can be seen in her pictures, which can be read either as distanced statements or as naïve testimonies to the euphoria of the 1960s. Kiki Kogelnik's magic word for deviation in both form and content is utopia; she is interested in transformations, in overcoming space and time, and has always considered the present to be the beginning of a better future. It is no wonder that in the 1970s she increasingly focussed on the subject of Womans Lib and from then on concerned herself with questions of gender affiliation. The retrospective exhibition at the Kunstverein in Hamburg and the lavishly designed and printed catalogue bear eloquent witness to all these stages in the work of an unusual artist; Kiki Kogelnik died in Vienna in 1997.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein in Hamburg, 15/9 - 30/12/2012