Alice Könitz’s sculptures riff on mid-twentieth-century modernist furniture and public art, while her installations of drawings, films, collages, and homemade magazines contextualize her monolithic geometric forms as both a celebration and a critique of design vernacular. Built from such inexpensive, readily available materials as construction paper, felt, lauan, cardboard, and plastic, and cobbled together with little more than a glue gun, Könitz’s sculptures offer a handmade intimacy absent in the high modernist forms they emulate. Rather they recall that mid-twentieth-century utopian vision of design’s ability to facilitate social change on an individual level. Like the diverse work of Charles and Ray Eames, Könitz’s practice erases boundaries between art and design, though her nonfunctional constructions operate more clearly as models illustrating how modernist design tenets have become clichéd in their translation to the tacky signs and sculptures erected in mini-malls and skyscraper courtyards. Using materials that allow for a more spontaneous, process-oriented studio practice, she presents a conflicted appreciation for this kitsch beauty that is underpinned by a yearning for a reinvigorated approach to modernist formalism.

She has had solo exhibitions at Nächst St Stephan in Vienna, Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles, and the Museum of the City of Mülheim an der Ruhr. Her work has been included in group exhibitions  including the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and the 2014 Made in LA show at the UCLA Hammer Museum where she received the Mohn award which honors artistic excellence.

Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art