Katherine Bernhardt’s (*1975) bold use of color and pop culture motifs are at the heart of her latest sculpture Gong Bu Pink Panther (2023). The title of the work, “Gong Bu”, which can be translated as “bow stance”, is one of the five basic Wushu stances. The new sculpture shows the Pink Panther preparing for a sidekick with a sly expression on his face. Wushu is a compilation of several forms of traditional Chinese martial arts recognized by the government of the People’s Republic of China in the early 1950s. The Pink Panther is an iconic figure that is an integral part of the artist’s visual lexicon, along with other characters such as E.T. and Darth Vader. Katherine says: “I look for the most obvious, overlooked things and then make them laugh or bring them to life in my paintings.”

Bernhardt’s artistic focus on the pink cartoon began on a trip to Hawaii with her young son, where they stayed in a hotel decorated entirely in pink and where the Pink Panther was playing on television. Her signature style consists of a rough outline of the figure filled in with a flat paint in bright color, suggesting a comparison to graffiti techniques. Katherine Bernhardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri and earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2000. Her work can be found in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Rubell Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the High Museum, among others. The artist has had solo exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, the Mario Testino Museum (MATE) in Lima, Peru, and the David Zwirner Gallery London and Hong Kong.