From April 11 to May 23, 2025, David Zwirner’s Los Angeles location hosts Sidewalk Chalk, the new solo exhibition by artist Katherine Bernhardt. Featuring a brand-new series of paintings, the American artist continues to expand her visual vocabulary by blending pop culture, autobiographical references, and her signature irreverence.
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The exhibition title references the colorful chalk used by children to draw on sidewalks—an image that perfectly captures the free-spirited, playful nature of her new works. Like a visual explosion of everyday icons and tropical hues, Bernhardt brings together Lucky Charms cereal, sticks of butter, Cookie Monster, Garfield, and the Pink Panther. The result is a chaotic and instinctive layering that reflects the hyperactive energy of her brushstrokes.
Among the most emblematic works is Chew (2024), where Cookie Monster opens wide to devour toilet paper rolls, loose cigarettes, Crest toothpaste, and Vaseline. It’s an ironic tribute to Giovanni da Modena’s 15th-century depiction of Hell, reimagined here as a joyful, chaotic landscape filled with symbols of American consumerism.
In It’s Butter! (2024), Garfield stands beside two towering stacks of butter, arms spread wide in excitement. In Butter Butter Butter Butter Butter, the Pink Panther sports a diagonal streak of butter across her cheek, surrounded by rainbow marshmallows. Colors and lines overlap, blur, and blend on the canvas, shaped by a fast, instinctual process in which the artist switches between spray paint, diluted acrylics, and even a mop.
Once again, Bernhardt proves herself one of the most vibrant and unconventional painters of her generation. From her early canvases featuring 2000s supermodels to her recent compositions that mix mass culture, irony, and improvisation, her aesthetic remains unmistakable. Sidewalk Chalk is a colorful journey into the heart of American culture—one of nostalgia, consumerism, and expressive freedom—told with the energy and humor that define Katherine Bernhardt’s work.
