Julia Wachtel focuses her artistic practice on the visual language of mass culture. In her paintings of the 1980s and 1990s, Wachtel inserted grotesque, irritating cartoon characters — popular with the middle class in the 1960s and 1970s – into the “readymade” lexicon of mainstream magazine and newspaper photographic images. In this way Wachtel appropriated this popular imagery to critique an increasingly media-saturated society. By juxtaposing these painted cartoon characters with images of pop stars, nuclear power plants and masks from so-called primitive cultures, Wachtel’s work also tackles the function and significance of images in modern society and the socio-political landscape of our time.

Recent solo exhibitions by Julia Wachtel include Kunsthalle, Bergen; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Centre d’Art Contemporain, Troyes. Her work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including Selections from Absolut Collection (curated by Haim Steinbach) at The Artist's Institute, New York; ICA, London; Kunsthalle, Bern; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; and Le Magasin, Grenoble.

Wachtel's work is also represented in many important international collections, such as MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.

Julia Wachtel is represented by the following galleries;
click through to discover more of her work.

Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York

Vilma Gold, London

You can also see more of Julia Wachtel's work on her own website.