Heike Kati Barath
Was war das jetzt
06.01. – 17.02.2019

The new year starts big at the Kunsthalle. They are often large, the paintings by Heike Kati Barath (*1966). In the Kunsthalle, her paintings will stretch several meters along the wall or tower upwards. This type of reference to the space, its dimensions or appearance, its architectural features or fixtures is characteristic of the painter’s exhibitions. She therefore usually creates her works specifically for the respective presentation and location. This is also the case now, for the exhibition in the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven.

However, the word “painting” does not adequately describe Heike Kati Barath’s artistic oeuvre. The painter often abandons the two-dimensionality of her pictures and the reference to the wall. For example, in addition to paint, she also applies impasto, colored joint sealant or develops a motif from the surface into the space through sculptural formations. Sometimes she also creates entire sculptures whose appearance seems to have sprung from the motifs of her paintings, or creates images in the eye of the beholder through subtle additions incorporating structural features. And finally, she also presents her paintings as installations in the room.

She has already shown this form of presentation once in Bremerhaven. Heike Kati Barath was already a guest in the city in 2017/18 in the special exhibition “Nord-West Zeitgenössisch”. As a representative for the collection of the Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, she occupied a room in the art museum. There were boards of different lengths and widths and in different colors on two walls. They gave the exhibition space the appearance of a warehouse and almost concealed a small portrait. It was the portrait of a face that was only hinted at with a few features, eyes, hair and a mouth, and made many a visitor shudder mysteriously from the background of the boards.

What many only realized at second glance was that the boards were also painted, in the classic way, paint on canvas and stretcher frame. In this respect, the “Collection” installation, in keeping with the exhibition theme, was really a warehouse, a picture warehouse. This guest contribution already showed that Heike Kati Barath’s paintings tread a fine line between reality, horror, comic and science fiction, sometimes comical, sometimes grotesque, sometimes abysmal.

With the exhibition “was das jetzt”, Heike Kati Barath, who studied at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent and at the Kunstakademie Münster and has held a professorship for Figurative Painting at the Bremen University of the Arts since 2013, now has a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven.

Curated by Dr. Kai Kähler.