The artist Katherine Bernhardt has joined forces with the Saint Louis Fashion Fund for a supermodel-slanted project.
For a limited time, a signed box of three T-shirts featuring images from the artist’s supermodel-inspired paintings from the 2000s are being sold to collectors and the art and fashion flock alike. “The Supers” boxes are being sold via the fashion fund’s site for $500 each with all proceeds being funneled back into its efforts to support up-and-coming designers and indie operations. The Missouri city’s fashion scene is a $7.7 billion entity. Bernhardt’s takes on Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Gisele Bündchen are features on the apparel.
Bernhardt, who is represented by David Zwirner in partnership with the New York City-based gallery Canada, has been showing her work since 1998. As a St. Louis native, she said supporting local organizations, which in turn help so many other people, is always important. The artist was also revved up about using her paintings of the supermodels. During a studio visit and a tour of Bernhardt’s storage, the SLFF’s board chair Susan Sherman zeroed in on the supermodels-inspired work for a potential collaboration, according to Bernhardt.
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But buyers will need to be decisive, since once the 100 KB x SLFF boxes are sold — that’s it. Shoppers will find another homegrown connection — the St. Louis-based Cheree Berry Paper and Design designed the boxes and the shirts were produced by House of Vision, a base for young creatives on St. Louis’ North Side, which is a project of Dream Builders 4 Equity.
Next year Bernhardt will be rolling out an exhibition with the fashion designer Jeremy Scott at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kan. Running from Feb. 7 through Aug. 3, “A Match Made in Heaven” is the first exhibition to delve into their shared references. Both individuals are 49 and Missouri-born. “We love the same things. He does fashion but my paintings have always been pop culture too,” Bernhardt said, “There’s so much overlap that it’s going to be awesome to see the paintings with his dresses and jewelry together. He came to my studio and did a fashion shoot here. It was totally fun.”
While art-plus-fashion is not a new equation, one of the upsides is attracting a wider public audience, Bernhardt said. “It’s not just art people. It’s fashion people too — it makes it fun.”
Partial to bright, eye-popping colors and consumerism in all shapes and forms, Bernhardt has re-imagined a sundry list of items for her work including Scotch tape, the Pink Panther-esque figures, childhood sticker books, a ketchup bottle spotted on her travels and other far-flung motifs. Henri Matisse, Peter Doig and Chris Ofili are a few favorite artists. “I look for the most obvious, overlooked things and then make them funny or animated in my paintings,” she once explained.
Bernhardt said that she also will be rolling out handwoven Nepalese rugs with Memphis Milano in early December, has a show coming up at the David Zwirner gallery in Los Angeles in April, and a retrospective of her work will debut at Seoul Arts Center in South Korea on June 5. Known for her “pop-culture influenced painterly paintings,” Bernhardt also described them as “witty, watercolor-like, fast, flowing, energetic, athletic and fun.”
It’s also physically demanding. Twenty-five-plus years of painting has taken a toll on her back, she said. “But I don’t see it as difficult. I love painting. I don’t see anything bad in it really — I feel lucky that I get to do it,” Bernhardt said.
