Breathless Rictus: Ken Currie’s Krankenhaus

Christine Slobogin

doi:10.16995/ddl.682

Abstract

This article reviews Ken Currie’s show Rictus, which ran at the Flowers Gallery on Cork Street in London from 8 November – 9 December 2017. While Currie had many paintings in the show, Krankenhaus is the eerie, unsettling, and powerful zenith of Currie’s work. It contains many of the themes on which Currie continuously ruminates (like the distrust of doctors or the fragility of the human body) but Krankenhaus also curiously focuses on the rhythms and weaknesses of breath and breathing. The painting visually touches on themes of suffocation, rupture, violence and death while also inspiring breathlessness and unease in viewers. This review focuses on Krankenhaus as the linchpin of Currie’s show and an explanation of his thoughts regarding medicine, humanity, and art.

Highlights

Ken Currie’s Krankenhaus is a painting that takes your breath away. (Fig. 1) 1 There were seventeen works in Currie’s show Rictus at Flowers Gallery, and yet Krankenhaus was the piece that stood out, sticking in the mind long after leaving.[2]
Currie plays upon common fears associated with the hospital: he paints a scene of injury and disfigurement, creating a fictional war hospital much like the historical one that scholar Santau Das describes as ‘a combination of an industrial factory, a grisly kitchen, and a house of magic, throbbing and humming with the remaking of men’
The closest comparison to a setting from our universe would be to a World War II hospital

Summary

Introduction

Ken Currie’s Krankenhaus is a painting that takes your breath away. (Fig. 1) 1 There were seventeen works in Currie’s show Rictus at Flowers Gallery, and yet Krankenhaus was the piece that stood out, sticking in the mind long after leaving.[2]. Ken Currie’s Krankenhaus is a painting that takes your breath away. (Fig. 1) 1 There were seventeen works in Currie’s show Rictus at Flowers Gallery, and yet Krankenhaus was the piece that stood out, sticking in the mind long after leaving.[2] The painting, like many of Currie’s works, makes viewers uncomfortable in their own skin.

Results

Conclusion