Through painting, Kai Althoff engages with the spiritualism of masculine identity as a metaphor for reconciliation with German history. Often articulated with a homoerotic subtext, Althoff portrays the male domain as psychologically complex, where power politics of violence, sensuality, vulnerability and enticement are played out against backdrops of war, religion and pub-land. Borrowing stylistically from art history, Kai Althoff’s work possesses a timeless quality, where narratives are suggested with confessional intimacy. Rendered with exquisite sensitivity, Althoff uses beauty to seduce the viewer, encouraging moral complicity.

Something sinister lies at the heart of Kai Althoff’s paintings: unease with the way history repeats itself. Languages borrowed from traditional art are used to paint out suggestive narratives of the artist’s own invention. Ranging from avant-garde collage to fairytale illustration, Kai Althoff’s appropriated styles carry the weight of historical authority. Blurring the boundaries between past and present, Althoff’s paintings explore sensuality, violence and morality as timeless themes.

Central to Kai Althoff’s paintings is a longing for reconciliation, with German history, masculine identity and the politics of pack mentality. His all-male cast of characters gives credence to the corruptibility and heroism of youth. Soldiers, dandies, saints and sinners all take starring roles, playing out the group dynamics of power, violence, vulnerability, enticement and sentimentality.

The wholesome ethic of German Catholicism and 30s fascist-style design repeatedly serve to underscore Kai Althoff’s taboo subtexts of homosexuality and a nation’s fractured history. Althoff only hints at his work’s contemporary origin through the use of modern materials such as resin, tape and tinfoil.

Using a variety of media, Kai Althoff draws sympathetic psychology from the physicality of his surfaces. Oil paint is applied with provocative sensuality, giving a tender eroticism to images of brutality. A collage depicting religious repentance is rendered on translucent paper: a frail veneer of purity. Althoff presents beauty as an epitomised guise of perversion; his paintings are elaborate seductions of amoral acquiescence.

From long-forgotten wars to orgy-esque club-land, Kai Althoff’s paintings explore the essence of masculine experience. Unspoken histories of love, guilt and redemption are rendered with incredible poignancy. Through painting, Althoff designs his own contemporary mythology: by delving into the past, Kai Althoff seeks ablution for the future. His paintings offer a quiet hope for the human condition.

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