Petra Cortright

Los Angeles based artist Petra Cortright (b.1986, Santa Barbara) has forged a unique vocabulary at the intersection of digital and real. She has been hailed as ‘the Monet of the twenty-first century’ by Charlotte Jansen (Artsy, 2016) and her paintings as 'Cy Twombly meets Hahao Miyazaki, only denser and more whimsical' (LA Weekly). Without a doubt, Petra Cortright is today’s Post-internet queen bee and an effortlessly-cool nerd. Cortright’s art practice revolves around playful, often erotic, images executed on computer softwares. Her video art and paintings focus on self-portraiture and online imagery, blurring the boundaries of our online and offline existence.

Petra Cortright (Santa Barbara, CA, 1986) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She studied Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, NY (2008); and the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004).

Recent exhibitions include: “.paint,” MCA, Chicago, IL (2020); "The Body Electric,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, touring to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; "Dirty Protest: Selections from the Hammer,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; "Now Playing: Video 1999-2019,” Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; "Hate Speech: Aggression and Imitation,” Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz, Austria; “Plugged-In Paintings,” SITE131, Dallas, TX; “Lucky Duck Lights Out,” 1301PE, Los Angeles, CA (solo)(all 2019); “I Was Raised On the Internet," MCA, Chicago, IL (2018); “RUNNING NEO-GEO GAMES UNDER MAME,” City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand (solo); Foxy Production, New York, NY (solo)(both 2017); "Electronic Superhighway,” Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; “ORANGE BLOSSOM PRINCESS FUCKING BUTTERCUP,” Société, Berlin, Germany (solo)(both 2016); and “NIKI, LUCY, LOLA, VIOLA,” Depart Foundation, Los Angeles, CA (solo)(2015).

Petra Cortright had her first solo exhibition at Carl Kostyál Gallery, Stockholm in 2014, followed by the solo show “orange blossom princess fucking buttercup” at Carl Kostyál Gallery, London in 2016. She has also participated in the group exhibition ‘Malmö Sessions’ (2019), at Carl Kostyál Gallery, Malmö, Sweden and the artist residency ‘Coccaro on Paper’, organised by the galleriest at Masseria Torre Coccaro, Puglia, Italy (2018).

Public projects have included commissions from Frank Gehry Partners, LLP; Midnight Moment, Times Square Arts, New York, NY; Art on theMART, Chicago, IL (all 2019); and SketchedSpace in Seoul, South Korea (2018). In 2014 Petra Cortright began to collaborate with fashion designer Stella McCartney for a series of video projects and digital modelling.

Cortright’s works are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Péréz Museum, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; MOCA Los Angeles; Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology; MOTI, Breda, in collaboration with Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; MCA Chicago; Kadist Foundation, Paris, San Francisco; BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; MOCA Los Angeles; and Rhizome’s Net Art Anthology, New York.