Katherine Bernhardt’s paintings are an immersive experience: a kaleidoscopic universe of electric colors that run like stain paintings and can represent both cartoon characters and a variety of recognizable consumer goods. They depict Garfield in bright orange or large colorful Nike shoes and various other elements of 21st century New York street culture and the global world of Instagram.
Bernhardt dips in and out of history with ease: The Pink Panther hit the big screen in 1964, just as Nike was going into production. Garfield is an icon of the late 1970s and early ’80s. She often paints certain objects and icons for their intriguing colors and shapes, blending different eras and creating collage-like reminders of our collective visual past. Other subjects, such as toucans and tropical fruits, allude to the beauty of nature and the environment, offering both unusual shapes to study and the opportunity to experiment with a wide spectrum of color. Katherine Bernhardt revisits “larger-than-life” products that often appear more vibrant than ever before, thanks to the topical colors she chooses.
As with Garfield, the artist combines these motifs into spontaneous and visually arresting compositions that exude joie de vivre. Yet for all the familiarity of the objects or the reminiscence of cartoons, their messages are ambiguous and always open to interpretation. In this sense, they are like coded visual riddles. In some cases, Bernhardt conflates the endearing (a chubby Garfield cat) with the abhorrent (cigarettes and junk food). In another example, she uses Nikes as a contemporary reference to free speech and racial justice (through quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s protests at NFL games that led to him appearing in Nike ad campaigns, and through the connection to #BLM, the Black Lives Matter movement that originated in Bernhardt’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri). At the same time, she isolates the shoes as inanimate objects, proposing them as a new subject for the traditional genre of still life painting. The Nikes can also be an overt, direct representation of New York City, as they are everything you see on the subway every day, along with the subway maps. Nikes and other such icons literally blend together thanks to the running colors, the fluidity of which also testifies to influences such as Morris Louis, the famous stain painter. But what does Babar, the “king of elephants,” have to do with the Nike logo? The unusual combination forces the viewer to become an active connoisseur and try to figure out and interpret the meaning, or they can simply enjoy the work in form and color. Some might see a reference to Babar in Nike’s best-selling “Atmos Air Max 1” shoe, whose upper features an elephant print and a flash of green in a hue that seems reminiscent of his suit. Bernhardt might instead retort that Babar looks good in green, a hue familiar to her from the myriad green tiles and accents at Le jardin, one of her favorite places in Marrakech. Likewise, some might interpret the image of Scotch tape and cigarettes as a pun on the seductive but dangerous combination of whiskey and cigarettes, while Bernhardt might respond that the lines simply intersected well and “worked.” But perhaps the most complete image of all is the monumental Garfield on Scotch Tape (2018), in which the cartoon cat seems to have gorged himself on the best and worst of treats.