Paula Kamps

Paula Kamps (born in 1990, Germany) lives and works in Chicago. She studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Tomma Abts and Elizabeth Peyton.

The practice of Paula Kamps explores mediums peripheral to painting; it focuses mainly on a technique halfway between watercolour and drawing, emphasising the brilliance and intensity of color offered by these processes. Her work, between figuration and abstraction, gives pride of place to large flat areas – « stains » as Andre Butzer says – which, skillfully spread over the canvas, reveal human figures, scenes of daily life, always fragmented. With figures often hazy or obscured and a recurring, but arcane symbology, Kamps’ work’s elegantly hint on subjects persistent throughout art history – the unreliability of memory, the evasiveness of meaning, and our continual desire to understand one another.

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The artist has been the subject of solo exhibitions at M. LeBlanc, Chicago (2024 & 2021); eastcontemporary, Milan (2022); Mine Project, Hong Kong (2022); Sans titre, Paris (2021); Kunstverein Heppenheim (2019), Spazio Nea, Naples (2018) as well as Kunsthaus Mettmann (2014).

Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at Galería Heinrich Ehrhardt, Madrid (2023); Good Weather, North Little Rock (2023); M.LeBlanc, Chicago (2022); David Zwirner’s Platform (online) (2022); Sans titre, Paris (2022); NÉVÉ, Los Angeles (2022); LVH, London (2021); Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome (2021); SLICE, Ufer Studios, Berlin (2020); Orchard32, New York (2019); Carbon12, Dubai (2018) and at Kunstverein Reutlingen (2018). Upcoming group exhibitions include: The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago; Secci Gallery, Florence and The Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2024).

Paula Kamps’s works are featured in the permanent collection of × Museum, Beijing.