1971-1980

Drawing on personal experience, Kogelnik sought to challenge the patriarchal norms that still dominate in society. Offering a critique of the portrayal of women she used images sourced from the pages of fashion magazines to create a series of paintings whose subjects are dressed in fiercely patterned clothes with manic faces that no longer appear to harbor any humanity, as they perform their expected roles. Drained of color the women in her It Hurts series appear to be assaulted by domestic items, yet continue to be oblivious to the violence being inflicted on them. Relief is found in her first works made in ceramics in 1974, a series of stylized freestanding heads where color and joy re-emerge. Later finding a liberation through Punk in the second half of the decade, Kogelnik’s figures appear to embrace a sense of freedom and pleasure that had previously been denied.