Featuring a selection of new and recent works, Seasons and Sacraments is Koether’s response to two important series of paintings by the French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and is the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in the UK to date. The exhibition is supported by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and travels to Arnolfini, Bristol.
Seasons and Sacraments is an exhibition of contemporary paintings by an artist who is remembering, repeating and working within the tradition of historical painting, while at the same time deviating from and radicalising the conceivably conservative position of being a painter.
The idea of “Network Painting” is central to Koether’s work. It is a term coined by the art historian David Joselit in his essay Painting Beside Itself from the journal October, 2009. It references a statement by Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997), a contemporary of Koether’s, in which he states that: “Simply to hang a painting on the wall and say that it’s art is dreadful. The whole network is important!” Koether acknowledges and emphasises the act of reading and re-interpreting paintings within her own work.