Kati Gegenheimer

Painter Kati Gegenheimer doesn’t shy away from the heartfelt or “cringe.” In fact, “that’s exactly where I often hope to land,” she says, “making work that is about love and care, and using energy to sustain those things, even when it seems out of fashion.” Gegenheimer, who studied painting and printmaking at Yale, initially wanted to be a journalist, but her fascination with bright hues and various visual media led her to art instead. “My impulse to record feels really close to what I do now in painting, just a different form,” she says. “I was always trying to find [formats that] … hold information, to hold memory, to keep records, and to then be able to look back, understand, and reflect.” Her works, saturated with vibrant colors, are meant to evoke childhood memories, joy, or other strong reactions. Gegenheimer is constantly pushing herself to play with new, bold pigments—she even painted her first studio a “mermaid teal,” both to resist succumbing to the standard “white cube” gallery space, and to challenge herself to create paintings that would stand out against their surroundings. Now, her first solo museum exhibition, We’ve Only Just Begun, is on display at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, exploring snapshots in time and new beginnings through riotous, colorful paintings hanging on (and in some cases painted directly onto) the walls.

The title of the exhibition comes from the Carpenters song of the same name. Gegenheimer herself is not a diehard fan of the duo, but she considers the song “to be almost painfully earnest in a way that I find really special.” The titular painting, among the first that viewers see upon entering the space, is of a few bars of sheet music in bubblegum-pink and white, set against swirling chartreuse and teal iconography. The piece took Gegenheimer almost three years to complete, a testament to the value of starting over, she says, and the hopefulness and optimism that underpins her art. In addition to the works displayed on the walls, Gegenheimer painted rainbow stripes on the baseboards of the room, a nod to the Romanesque-inspired architecture of the historic building (striping, often in the form of alternating red brick and white stone, is a hallmark of high Romanesque architecture), and added chartreuse paneling to create visual harmony throughout the space. The result is a room where joy practically jumps off the canvas and into the physical space itself, where Gegenheimer hopes visitors feel their moods change as soon as they walk in. A group of Girl Scouts attended the opening, she recounts, “and just seeing these Brownies look around and be enthused about the colors in the show was so exciting to me. It’s something I’ll probably never forget.”