Consumer culture, technology and feminism were recurring themes throughout her work. Her unique aesthetic is marked with playfulness and humour yet imbued with a stark sense of criticality. In resisting and contesting the lure of post-war capitalist culture in her work, she demarcated herself from her contemporary peers.

Her first ceramics were made in 1974, and soon became a key activity in her artistic practice. Her ceramic works were hand-built and cut from slabs using stencils and are reminiscent of her earlier paintings in their boldness, bright colours and vivacity. Drawing on a method of presentation she employed in an exhibition at the Henri Gallery in Washington, DC in 1990, a number of islands pepper the space; made from clusters of plinths of different heights and widths and displaying a range of her freestanding works that date from the 1950s through to the 1990s. Arranged chronologically, this exhibition demonstrates Kogelnik’s boundless capacity for invention and restless commitment to making.

Kiki Kogelnik was born in 1935 in Bleiburg, Austria. She lived and worked in New York and Vienna. She died in 1997 in Vienna, Austria.