Kati Heck

The Upstairs

Kati Heck’s new exhibition, Dear Cobalt Monsters, opens on 06 June 2025 at The Upstairs, Bortolami Gallery, presented by Sadie Coles HQ. This exhibition invites visitors into Heck’s theatrical world, where artifice, deception and hybridity rule as all around shape-shifting figures enact inscrutable scenarios.

Heck’s fluid painterly fictions and figures depict playful, enigmatic and surreal portraits of friends and known figures that satirise contemporary heroism and encourage the viewer to embrace transgressive deviation. In a vulgar performance, a crowd gathers at the deathbed of a deformed patriarch, exploring the loss of decency in our current state of affairs. Three ‘Monster’ portraits depict human/animal amalgamations, echoing the work of female surrealists such as Leonora Carrington, while nearby a sculpted ‘manhole’ lets off steam, a comment on today’s belligerent and degenerative rhetoric.

Dear Cobalt Monsters delves into Western politics’ slant toward populism, where individual figures become (non-)heroes, greedy for past greatness. The sculpture recalls Elfriede Jelinek’s speech protesting the rise of the far-right in Europe: ‘I can hear a monster breathing; I can hear the breath of democracy weakening.’ Oscillating between narrative and delirium, Heck’s exhibition exposes the bizarre malfunctions of contemporary politics and society, drawing the viewer into a satirical yet highly intoxicating sensibility to history and humanity.