Jutta Koether

Jutta Koether (b. 1958, Cologne) lives and works in New York and Berlin. Since the 1980s, Koether has utilized appropriation to situate herself within an eclectic artistic genealogy that references idioms from French baroque painting to Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, and Surrealism. What Koether deals with in her paintings, are the formulaic gestures of an exhausted and mostly male self. The evocative magic of such pathos formulas is heightened by motifs typical of her work are garlands, dotted picture outlines, circle shapes, grid-like zones, apples and canes. These visual leitmotifs are deployed like rhetorical effects, sometimes passing through the bodies.

Koether had a survey exhibition Tour de Madame at Museum Brand-horst, Munich (2018) which travelled to MUDAM, Luxembourg (2019). Koether has had solo exhibitions at DCA – Dundee Contemporary Arts (2013); Arnolfini, Bristol (2013);Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2011); Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2008); Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (2007) and Koelnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2006). Her work was part of The Borgmann Donation Jump into the Future-Art from the 90’s and 2000’s at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2018). The artist’s work was included in the 2014 Shanghai Biennial; in the Whitney Biennials in 2012 and 2006 and in the 2012 São Paulo Biennial. Koether’s work was extensively featured in an edition of Art Since 1900 edited by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and David Joselit.