ART CITIES: Hong Kong-Katherine Bernhardt

Katherine Bernhardt’s boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most energetic painters working today. She first attracted notice in the early 2000s. In the decade following, she began making pattern paintings that feature an ever-expanding list of quotidian motifs. Tacos, coffee makers, toilet paper, cigarettes, E.T., Garfield, Darth Vader, and the Pink Panther make unlikely visual combinations within expansive fields of exuberant color.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

Bernhardt takes pleasure in variety, and fully investigates each of her obsessions before moving to another. Bernhardt’s trust in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict anything she wants, and the democratizing surfaces of her canvases work without illusion, perspective, logical scale shifts, or atmosphere. With Bernhardt’s blunt yet lyrical approach, each painting has the feel of a complete thought that engages the artist’s rich and raucous free association. Katherine Bernhardt presents her solo exhibition “Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art”, the works focus on characters from the Japanese media franchise and global game sensation Pokémon, continuing to expand Bernhardt’s unique visual lexicon, which culls from an irreverent pop vernacular as well as her own life and the broader culture. Bernhardt first attracted notice in the early 2000s for her paintings of supermodels taken from the pages of fashion magazines such as Elle and Vogue. The compositional elements of Bernhardt’s paintings include palettes that allude to the tropical climes of Puerto Rico, references to the design and coloration of Moroccan rugs and West African Dutch wax fabrics, and influences ranging from Henri Matisse and the Pattern and Decoration movement to Peter Doig and Chris Ofili. In this exhibition, Bernhardt continues her exploration of contemporary pop phenomena by focusing on the characters of Pokémon’s expansive universe Conceived by creator Satoshi Taijiri and art director Ken Sugimori and first launched by Nintendo in Japan in 1996, Pokémon was introduced to much fanfare in the United States in 1998 and has become one of the world’s largest cross-media franchises. Bernhardt previously debuted the Pokémon character Ditto, a pink-purple blob-like form with shape-shifting powers, in her 2022 exhibition Why is a mushroom growing in my shower? at David Zwirner London.  In “Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art”, the new works feature compositions culled from the Pokémon Trading Card Game; these “cards,” each featuring a different Pokémon, are rendered using the signature elements of Bernhardt’s ebullient style. For each painting, she delineates a loose border that frames the character represented and overlays the statistics and special abilities that distinguish their role within the game. Colors and lines bleed and pool together across their surfaces, revealing Bernhardt’s brisk and improvisational process. To create her works, the artist first draws on upright canvases with spray paint, after which she lays them on the floor to apply acrylic paint thinned out with water. Moving back and forth between several paintings at once, Bernhardt invites accident and chance into each of her dynamic compositions through her fast-paced actions. By engaging the Pokémon ecosystem—premised on rarity—Bernhardt taps into a structure that corresponds to the high-low dichotomies of contemporary painting. In her attempt to “catch them all,” Bernhardt samples many of the eighteen Pokémon “types” that allow players to categorize characters according to their powers and capabilities. In “Surfing Pikachu” (2023), the titular canary-yellow critter originally created by artist Atsuko Nishida bursts across the painting in action. The cyan-colored Wobbuffet squeezes its eyes shut and opens its mouth wide against a bright pink backdrop. Mimikyu is the subject of “Dummy Doll Jealous Eyes” (2023), facing the viewer with floppy lopsided ears and a crooked smile. Bernhardt situates these characters in movement: the multiple arms of the rosy Chansey are activated mid-air as if running forth; a leporine Cinderace is poised for battle. The framework of these paintings seems to contain the characters’ constantly morphing bodies, which are ready to move and leap into our own spheres at any moment. In the monumentally scaled “Yeti Gaming” (2021), several Pikachus and amoebic Dittos share space with Teddiursa and household items such as a bottle of Elmer’s glue, a jug of Clorox bleach, and rolls of toilet paper—familiar motifs in Bernhardt’s oeuvre.

Photo Left: Katherine Bernhardt, Ditto VMax Ju Ju, 2021, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 60 x 48 inches (152.4 x 121.9 cm), © Katherine Bernhardt, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery. Right: Katherine Bernhardt, Vaporeon VMAX, 2021, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 60 x 48 inches (152.4 x 121.9 cm), © Katherine Bernhardt, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

Info:, 5–6/F, H Queen’s, 80 Queen’s Road Central Hong Kong, Duration: 20/5-5/8/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.davidzwirner.com/