Katherine Bernhard: Sidewalk Chalk at David Zwirner, Los Angeles
April 11–June 14, 2025
Images courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery and the Artist
Katherine Bernhardt’s latest exhibition, Sidewalk Chalk, at David Zwirner’s Los Angeles space, is a riotous celebration of pop culture and painterly exuberance. Bernhardt continues her exploration of everyday iconography, this time infusing her canvases with motifs like Lucky Charms marshmallows, sticks of butter, and beloved cartoon characters such as Cookie Monster, the Pink Panther, and Garfield. Her vibrant palette and dynamic brushwork transform these familiar images into energetic compositions that oscillate between the whimsical and the chaotic.
In works like Chew (2024), Bernhardt reimagines Cookie Monster’s gaping maw as a repository for modern consumer goods—rolls of toilet paper, cigarettes, and tubes of Crest toothpaste—creating a humorous yet unsettling tableau that echoes the infernal scenes of Giovanni da Modena’s 15th-century frescoes. Similarly, in It’s Butter! (2024), Garfield is flanked by towering sticks of butter, his arms outstretched in a gesture that is both welcoming and absurd. These compositions, rendered with thinned acrylics and spontaneous spray paint lines, evoke the ephemeral nature of sidewalk chalk drawings, underscoring the exhibition’s title.
Bernhardt’s approach is unapologetically maximalist, embracing the visual overload of contemporary life. Her paintings do not seek to critique consumer culture but rather to immerse the viewer in its kaleidoscopic allure. The result is a series of works that are as much about the joy of painting as they are about the subjects depicted—a testament to Bernhardt’s ability to find profundity in the playful.