ABOUT
Kathy Ager (1981) is a Canadian-born oil painter based in Vancouver. Her work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Print, High Fructose and Beautiful Bizarre Magazine. Brand collaborations include Nike and Real Skateboards.
She creates detailed still lifes that feel simultaneously Baroque and acerbically modern. Inspired by the 17th-Century Golden Age of Dutch and Spanish painting, her imagery uses historical visual rhetoric to deliver intensely personal and emotively charged themes.
The seductive darkness with which Kathy reveals universal human longings is both disarming and consuming. Broken hearts are offered up as organs in a bowl, skeletal memento mori abound, and dating feels about as abject in the modern world as butchery; books are stacked with suggestive spines, and flowers wither while fruit threatens to decay. The abattoir is never far from the transcendent ambitions of classical statuary in her world, while beauty is embroiled in the vulnerability of intimacy and self-exposure.
SELECTED BRAND COLLABORATIONS
Aritzia, Nitro Snowboards, Nike, NOCTA, Polo Ralph Lauren, Real Skateboards
CURRENT REPRESENTATION
Thinkspace — Los Angeles
MURALS
2023
"An Immortelle for a Smalltown Boy" — Cafe Belgique, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2020
"Lonesome Dove" — Uptown Mural Festival, Kelowna, Canada
2019
"Homecoming" — Vancouver Mural Festival, Vancouver, Canada
EXHIBITIONS
2023
100 Amigos (group) — Vancouver
Dream State (group) — StolenSpace Gallery, London
2021
Astro (group) — Astro Studio, Vancouver
2020
Tapas (group) — Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles
Fool's Gold (solo) — Thinkspace Gallery at MOAH Lancaster, Lancaster, California
15 Years of Thinkspace (group) — Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles
2019
100 Amigos (group) — El Kartel, Vancouver
Golden Age (solo) — Thinkspace Gallery, Los Angeles
The New Classics (group) — Galerie COA, Montréal
Pow! Wow! Exploring The New Contemporary Movement (group) — Honolulu Museum of Art School
2018
SCOPE Miami Beach 2018, Thinkspace Booth (group) — SCOPE, Miami FL
The New Vanguard II (group) — The Lancaster MOAH, Lancaster CA
Nexus II (group) — The Brand Library and Arts Center, Glendale CA
LAX / PDX II (group) — Antler Gallery, Portland OR
2017
Witches Brew (group) — Teatro Praga, Lisbon, Portugal
PUBLICATIONS & PRESS
"How Canadian artist Kathy Ager hits the mark between art and commerce" — The Globe and Mail, December 17th, 2022
Kathy Ager's 'Golden Age' Paintings Collapse Time — hi fructose.com
INTERVIEW: Kathy Ager 'GOLDEN AGER @ THINKSPACE PROJECTS — beautifulbizzare.net
"The Golden Age" by Artist Kathy Ager — booooooom.com
Cover artist and feature article — Bitchslap Magazine, Copenhagen, Issue #31
The Look Of Love: A Studio Visit With Amsterdam-Based Painter, Kathy Ager — Juxtapoz.com