Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Cheerful Melancholia, 2024
oil on canvas
160 × 140 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin has titled her third solo exhibition at Galerie Judin Cheerful Melancholia. On the one hand, this refers to an ambivalent emotional state. On the other hand, she refers to a German Renaissance artist who was one of the first ever to depict himself as an artist. This marked the beginning of a tradition of artistic self-reflection that Kafchin continues today in a way that is as poignant as it is unsettling.
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Vessels II, 2023
oil on wood
80 × 60 cm
The inspiration for Kafchin’s exhibition title and the eponymous painting is Albrecht Dürer’s famous engraving Melencolia I. Kafchin has catapulted the angel lost in thought into the 21st century. Certainly not an easy awakening for a creature from the Early Modern Age. While Dürer’s melancholy is triggered by deep inner feelings, Kafchin’s culprit is the digital parallel universe. The Internet appears as a voracious monster in the form of a cell phone. With its large, neon-yellow teeth, it pulls the swiping figure into its abysses. As in this painting, Kafchin always deploys a whole arsenal of symbolic attributes that bear witness to various stages of the artist’s life; here, for example, the Pride flag as proof of her trans identity or the angle grinder that alludes to her training as a sculptor.
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Drained Danube, 2022-2024
oil on canvas
191 × 569 cm
At almost six meters in width, Kafchin addresses the beginning of her rocky life path in her monumental Drained Danube. The ship with an oversized compass is a symbol of the young artist who tried to navigate her way from the Romanian hinterland to Western Europe and the international art scene. But the ship initially ran aground in the Romanian city where she was born. Breaking free is out of the question. Making it from this backward place to cosmopolitan Berlin, where the artist now lives, demanded a great deal of her. To endure her challenging self-development, the child Kafchin early on took refuge in a fairytale world, which pervades the painting in the form of cute or grotesque figures.
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Bad Bombs, 2023
oil on wood
16 × 23 cm
The other paintings can also be interpreted biographically, but always aim at larger contexts of meaning. For example, when Kafchin parodies the national hero Brancusi as the eternal shadow hovering over Romanian art in its entirety (From Brancusi with Love) or depicts a possible Third World War as a facet of toxic masculinity in the form of phallic missiles (Bad Bombs).
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Self-portrait with Low Vibes, 2024
oil on wood
40 × 30 cm
The leitmotif of Kafchin’s journey through life is melancholy as a critical reflection of time and the self, and which runs through all of the 15 pictures. This ambivalent state of mind can also be detected in an unadorned and straightforward form in this exhibition’s sole self-portrait: Self-portrait with Low Vibes serves as a fitting contemporary, selfie-like equivalent of Dürer’s Melencolia.
Hortensia Mi Kafchin, born in Galați in 1986, is one of the most important voices in a young Romanian art scene that has branched out internationally. She is represented by Galerie Judin in Berlin and P·P·O·W in New York. Kafchin’s works have recently been shown at the National Gallery in Bucharest, the MAK in Vienna, the Center Pompidou and the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton in Paris, among others. She lives and works in Berlin.
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Me at Old Age, 2023
oil on canvas
50 × 40 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Angel in the Server Room, 2020-2022
oil on canvas
80 × 100 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Empty Head, 2020-2023
oil and bronze powder on canvas
119 × 180 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Drained Danube, 2022-2024
oil on canvas
191 × 569 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Flooded Club, 2023
oil on canvas
192 × 192 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Situationship, 2023
oil on canvas
158 × 136 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Enemy Mine, 2013-2024
oil on canvas
120 × 140 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Vessels II, 2023
oil on wood
80 × 60 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Lady of the Internet, 2023
oil on wood
80 × 60 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
From Brancusi with Love, 2023
oil on canvas mounted on cardboard
50 × 70 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Cheerful Melancholia, 2024
oil on canvas
160 × 140 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Self-portrait with Low Vibes, 2024
oil on wood
40 × 30 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Old Friends, 2016-2023
oil on canvas
160 × 140 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
My Transilvania, 2021
oil on wood
50 × 54 cm
Hortensia Mi Kafchin
Bad Bombs, 2023
oil on wood
16 × 23 cm
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.
Cheerful Melancholia (Installation View) Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany, February 24 - April 6, 2024.