Emma Kohlmann
With Fire, I Love
January 18 - February 18, 2023
Silke Lindner is excited to announce With Fire, I Love, a solo exhibition by artist Emma Kohlmann. For her fifth solo exhibition in New York, and the first one with the gallery, she will show a series of new paintings with individually pyrographed frames. In these atmospheric paintings, Kohlmann continues to expand her distinct universe, in which anthropomorphous figures, flora and fauna coexist in spiritual spheres, free of hierarchies.
Visually informed by a variety of cultural references encompassing Greek and Roman mythology, modern painting history, folk art and DIY punk ephemera, her paintings manifest a cosmos in which a recurring set of characters inhabit their realm with a naturalness that is both poignant and comical. Her figures’ unique facial expressions, often seductive, curious, dreamy, sinister and serene all at once, equally possess a simplicity and depth that is key to Kohlmann’s larger interplay of form and content.
Stylistically naive and folksy, the absence of perspectives and lack of relational scales translates the egalitarian belief system Kohlmann’s practice is rooted in. Considering not only human beings, but every living organism, a sense of togetherness and community is palpable throughout her work: entangled couples gather inside a giant blossom, performing dances behind plants’ leaves while a group of naked figures uses joint efforts to hold up the burdens of a heavy, drooping flower. Little angels, demons, horses and birds hover in front of a colossal red figure bent over on knees and elbows. Enigmatic, she looks straight through the viewer, channeling the dreamlike scene in a single gaze.
In an evocative color scheme of mossy greens, Prussian blue and crimson red, Kohlmann’s moody palette transcends from nature’s elements to the spiritual, mirroring the unique spaces she creates at the intersection of the earthly and the fantastical. Like deeply hidden chambers, the paintings open doors to most wondrous places, where the spirits reign freely, in the depth of the mind.
Emma Kohlmann (born 1989 in The Bronx) lives and works in Northampton, MA. She received a B.A. from Hampshire College, MA, and has exhibited in the United States and internationally. She has had solo exhibitions at Jack Hanley Gallery (New York, NY), V1 (Copenhagen, DK) and The Journal/Tennis Elbow (New York, NY) and has been included in numerous group exhibitions including shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, (Tucson, AZ) Venus over Manhattan (New York, NY), The Pit (Los Angeles, CA), and Andrew Edlin (New York, NY). Her work is in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA and upcoming shows include a solo exhibition at Cooper Cole, Toronto, in June 2023. She publishes her own zines, and frequently collaborates with artists, writers, musicians and designers on other ephemera like book plates, records and clothes. She co-founded and co-runs Mundus Press with her sister Charlotte Kohlmann.