Katharina Arndt
b. 1981, Germany

Education

2000-2005 Study of Fine Arts at HBK Braunschweig

2006 Master of Fine Arts by John Armleder

Her fast and colorful paintings ironize the contemporary mass consumerist aesthetic of a decadent, abundant society in picturing her everyday life in the digital age. “I really enjoy profane culture” confided Berlin-based artist Katharina Arndt in a conversation about her practice. “I like how the techno girlies dress at the beach in Barcelona, wearing shitty tattoos and drinking cheap mojitos from plastic cups.” Arndt’s artistic gaze is often drawn towards such scenes of playful indulgence and ephemeral excess: a nude woman smoking a cigar and lounging in a loosely draped fur coat, a couple enjoying a post-coital movie while drinking wine and distracting themselves

with social media, and a club full of young and beautiful party-goers reveling in the intoxicating buzz of dim lights, pulsing music, and plentiful drinks. “I really like to look and watch the people.”

The focus of my artistic work (painting, drawing, neon signs) is the observation of digital communication behavior and the visualization of aesthetics of mass consumption in the digital age.

For me, the symbol of this is the topic of 'surface' - social, cultural, material. In the hyperreal and at the same time immaterial online world, the visual appearance alone dominates - of ourselves and the products we are supposed to buy.

We stroke the shiny screen of our smartphones countless times every day, our bodies are hairless, the corners are round, our sunglasses are mirrored. The smooth appears as a metaphor for lack of resistance, eternal youth, as artificial, uncritical, superficial, conformist. In tension with this is the individual, his feelings, behavior.

I transfer this topic into painting both formally and in terms of content. I work on artificial supports such as PVC film, lacquer paper and Plexiglas with shiny acrylic paint and paint pens. Fast, reduced, almost childlike, the motifs and medium function as an artistic mirror of the quantity and speed of perceived scenes.

The figures in my pictures often wear sunglasses, are glued to their cell phones, and have headphones on. They are socially highly active and at the same time socially isolated, e.g. the young man on the beach (“Walk the Dog”): He is so busy, almost stressed, that he doesn't notice anything around him. The same goes for the couple in the café (“The Couple”), who are together and yet also communicate digitally with others.

I see my works as psychograms of a positivist consumer society that is trying to escape its own transience.

Public Collections

Ulrich Dietz collection, Stuttgart

aeroplastic, Brussels

Saatchi Collection

Collection Haupt, Berlin

Press

2023 Tatler magazine | Taiwan | double page “Reality and Fantasy” Dez 2023

art magazin | Cover + part of the title story “naive painting” | August 23

Overstandard | “Observing The Western Life Focused on Consumerism,

Hedonism & Cheap Thrills” | online

2021 La Vangardia | „POSTALES NEGRAS DE SOL Y PLAYA“ | printed