Hilfen und Recht der äußeren Wand (an mich): Kai Althoff

Opening Thursday, October 23, 1997, Anton Kern Gallery will present installations, works on paper and photographs by Kai Althoff. This is his first solo exhibition in New York.

Kai Althoff´s installations in the gallery serve as vehicles, suggesting self-reflection and introspection, and stem from the premise of a structural/ support system: in this case the idea of a wall and its hermeneutic significance. Althoff´s motive seems didactic, but upon closer examination the viewer is left to his or her own interpretations.

Hilfen und Recht der äußeren Wand (an mich), translated: strength and support of the exterior wall (to me), consists of painted wooden constructions, as well as drawings and photographs. Althoff incorporates the various media into an installation creating his setting. What appears at first glance as hermetic, unsettling and foreign gives way to an intense and personal design of the artist´s aesthetic: a seemingly naive atmosphere replete with social and political commentary. Althoff´s ambient and slightly decorative surroundings are charged with narratives full of unyielding clues -- beautiful, eerie, and dissarming they tell a story that is not always obviously resplendent.