Christiane Köhne: Pink Freud

We live in a world of sensory overload, of images clamoring for attention, colorful, fast and fast-moving. There are various ways to react to this situation – also and especially as an artist. Christiane Köhne has chosen, with a childlike impartiality and a large portion of courage, to swim with the flood of images, to fish individual protagonists and motifs out of the tides and to present them to us as eye candy. Their selection criteria seem to be highly subjective.
There is no separation between motifs worthy of art and those unworthy of art in her work. Everything seems to be equally important, and/or equally unimportant: Clouds of color, decorative ornaments, animals and movie stars. Alpacas, donkeys, aardvarks, sloths, parrots, mushrooms and bodybuilders stand on equal footing. Hitchcock meets H&M! Arte meets children’s channel!
The pictures resemble a lively juxtaposition and confusion of figuration and abstraction. Christiane Köhne confesses color: heavy and light forms and colors, concrete persons and objects, patterns and color mists are colorfully mixed – and yet balanced.