Borrowing from moments of history, religious iconography, and counter-cultural movements, Althoff has been creating imaginary environments in which paintings, sculpture, drawing, video, and found objects commingle.[1] Tapping a multitude of sources, from Germanic folk traditions to recent popular culture, from medieval and gothic religious imagery to early modern expressionism, Althoff's characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion.[3] His image bank and painterly style also draw on the past, especially early-20th-century German Expressionism, reconfigured by introducing collaged technique.[4]
Much of Althoff's work is collaborative. For the 4th Berlin Biennale, Althoff and Lutz Braun created the site-specific installation Kolten Flynn, made up of three vitrines draped in red foil and full of a child’s paintings, drawings, pens and other abandoned materials.[5] Along with Yair Oelbaum, he conceived the dramatic play There we will be buried (2010), which debuted in 2011 at the Dixon Studio in Southend-on-Sea in Essex, England. For their U.S.-premiere performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the pair portrayed the show’s main characters, Orpah and Lydia, two single mothers searching for a lost daughter.[6] In Die Kleine Bushaltestelle (Gerüstbau) (Little Bus Stop [Scaffolding], 2012) Althoff performed alongside fellow artist Isa Genzken in a 70-minute absurdist comedy shot on home video.[7]
Althoff's work has been included in several books listing contemporary artists, such as Art Now, published by Taschen. He is also a musician, releasing solo work under such monikers as Fanal, Engelhardt/Seef/Davis Coop. or Ashley's. He and Justus Köhncke perform as Subtle Tease, and he co-founded the band Workshop with Christoph Rath, Stefan Mohr and Stephan Abry.[8]
Current group exhibitions include Invisible Adversaries: the Marieluise Hessel Collection, Center for Curatorial Studies, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson and Identity Revisited, The Warehouse, Dallas in 2016; Avatar and Atavism: Outside the Avant-Garde, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf in 2015; Not Yet Titled, Museum Ludwig, Cologne in 2013.
2009: Mapping the Studio: Artists from the Francois Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi, Venice
2009: Brandon Stosuy and Kai Althoff: Mirror Me, DISPATCH Projects, New York
2010: Beyond | In WNY, Alternating Currents, Albright Knox Triennial, New York
2010: At Home/Not At Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies and Hessel Museum of Art, New York
2012: A Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance, Tate, London
