Nevertheless, Althoff isn't merely a regionalist. It's interesting to compare him to Americans like John Currin, whose show is up at Andrea Rosen, and Elizabeth Peyton, whose exhibition at Gavin Brown just closed. Like Currin, Althoff draws on historical sources. But Currin is more enamored of art history, and, lately, of himself. For the moment, he has veered into some buggy, self-referential, John-and-Yoko territory. Still, he toes a fabulously dangerous line between the conservative and the twisted, the academic and the out-there. Althoff also plays with devalued styles, like illustration and folk art, although he's never overtly autobiographical. For Peyton, history has always been in the air of her work, while love is in its blood. Her art is steeped in a coltish eroticism, something at once personal and pop. Althoff is the exact opposite: Pop is incidental, love is in the air, and history is in the blood. He doesn't separate dominance and submission, barbarism and sex. Which may connect him to someone like Collier Schorr, whose intense photographs of contemporary German youths in Wehrmacht uniforms are on view at 303 Gallery. Both Schorr and Althoff present shadowy images that evoke historic schizophrenia, male fragility, and the return of the repressed.
-- Jerry Saltz (Village Voice, 2001)
-- Jerry Saltz (Village Voice, 2001)
