Through the elusive simplicity of both form and colour, the work of Kim Bartelt mediates on the ephemerality of the world and the poetic contradictions that lie at the heart of contemporary human experience. Her method of layering paper sheets of varying degrees of thickness onto canvas, produces a unique hybrid of painting and sculpture that contrasts the clarity of the forms with the fine, intimate detail of the textured paper. Creating canvases that draw the viewer inward, to reveal a pulsing inner landscape, that capture the often fragile connection between the seen and the unseen, the permanent and transient.
Born in Berlin, Germany, Bartelt initially planned to study architecture but a series of events led to her taking up art history in Paris, France before enrolling onto an art Foundation year at Parsons Paris. After moving to the US and finishing her studies in Fine Art at Parsons School of Design in New York, she took a job painting sets for large-scale commercial campaigns. It was there that she began taking an interest in the discarded sheets of paper and began slowly incorporating it into her art practice; making impossibly open, minimal collages that through their delicate translucence appeared to transcend their own materiality.
Since returning to Germany in 2003, Bartelt has continued working with canvas and paper and in recent years her explorations into space and volume have evolved into large-scale sculptural works – megalithic-feeling structures that are often made of deceptively fragile, packing material and papier-mâché.
The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions most notably at the Cadogan Gallery, London in 2024, Cadogan Gallery, Milan in 2023 and Cadogan Gallery, London in 2022. In that same year, her work was a prominent feature in An Endless Curve – Art Perspectives III at the Circle Culture Gallery, Berlin as well as A Double Presentation, Wilhelm Hallen #2, Berlin in 2021. Bartelt has exhibited all around the world including Mexico City, Ghent, London, Chicago and Berlin. In 2019 she completed artist residencies at Numeroventi 2019 in Italy and Joya AiR 2019 in Spain.