With her large-scale, vibrantly colored paintings, Katherine Bernhardt has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary American art. Her expressive painting focuses on a globalized media and consumer culture. The HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark is dedicating its first institutional solo exhibition in Europe to her. The publication documents a selection of key works from recent years and offers a contextualization of her oeuvre. The title is a German neologism combining the elements essential to her artistic approach: Neon – Color – Blinding – Luminance – Force – Painting – Retina – Collision – Hazard. As a gesture of linguistic overload and as a condensation of a logic of sensory experience, the title refers to a production of images that directly target perception, stimulus intensity, and visual superimposition.

Bernhardt was born in 1975 in St. Louis, where she now lives again after spending time in Chicago and New York, and runs her spacious studio in a former auto repair shop. Her works are included in numerous collections. Represented by David Zwirner and Canada, New York.