NADA Miami 2021

In sculptural abstractions referencing the curvature and sway of biomorphic design, the sumptuously contoured and textured wall reliefs of Düsseldorf-based artist Jens Kothe apply the media of modular architecture to express the soft, latex-like vulnerability of laboring bodies made malleable by the terms of commercial exchange. His reliefs convey both intimacy and distance; the body coalesces with its environment to create a kind of camouflage. While supple and sensuous–and shuttling viscerally between simulations of the ancient and plastic–Kothe’s work repudiates binary divisions between the native body and its prosthetics to inquire into the shifting limits of corporeality and the technical constitutability of the self.

Jens Kothe (Born in 1985, Bochum, Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. Selected exhibitions include: Philara Collection, Düsseldorf; Kunsthaus Essen; Kunsthalle Bochum; Museum Kunstpalast; Ruhrtriennale Bochum; Efremidis Gallery, Berlin; Barbé Urbain Gent; Museum Ostwall, Dortmunder U, Dortmund; Platform 6a, Otegem; Kunstverein Heppenheim; Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden and Berthold Pott, Cologne. The artist earned his master’s degree under professor Andreas Gursky at the Academy Düsseldorf in 2011, from 2009-2011 he studied at the National Sculpture School in Oberammergau, and received his bachelor’s degree in Architecture at TU Dortmund in 2009.