Kate Gottgens is an established, international, contemporary artist who lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She is known for her colour-saturated, psychologically-laden paintings that explore the subconscious and unconscious terrain of memory, repression and desire. Shifting between figuration and abstraction, Gottgens blends imagery, time and place to create ambiguous moments that are simultaneously atmospheric and visually seductive, with narratives strangely unsettling, even ominous.

Kate Gottgens was born in 1965 in Durban, South Africa. Gottgens graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, in 1987. She was the recipient of the Ampersand Fellowship Award, resulting in a residency in New York City, USA, in 2019, and was selected for the prestigious Thames & Hudson publication, 100 Painters of Tomorrow in 2014.

Gottgens most recent solo exhibitions include Darkening Dusk at Maruani Mercier Gallery in Knokke, Belgium in 2025; Her Fine Blades at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town and a solo presentation at The Armory Show in New York titled Unknown Lovers, also with SMAC Gallery, both in 2024.

In 2023, Gottgens presented a To The Brink at Art Brussels, in Brussels, Belgium with SMAC Gallery and A String of Signs at Huxley-Parlour Gallery in London, UK. In 2022 she presented Whispering of Ghosts, curated by Owen Martin, at the Boschendal Norval Art Gallery, in Stellenbosch and The Swimmer at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg, both in South Africa. Further solo exhibitions include: Skyglow on Mars Black, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town in 2020; Tired from Smiling at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town in 2017; Famine at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg in 2016; The Rising Sea at NUNC Contemporary Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium; Infinite Loop at SMAC Gallery in Stellenbosch and Savage Nature at Espacio Liquido in Gijon, Spain both in 2014; and MALICE Aforethought at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town 2013.

Recent group exhibitions include: Licked by the Waves at the MORE Museum in Gorssel, Netherlands and We the People: 30 Years of Democracy in South Africa, curated by Liese van der Watt at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, both in 2024; Beach, curated by Danny Moynihan at Nino Mier Gallery, New York Soho & Tribeca, New York, USA and Tales for a Stranger, Curated by Azu Nwagbogu at The Warehouse by Maruani Mercier, Zaventem, Belgium, both in 2023.

Gottgens’ art fair participation includes a solo booths at The Armory Fair in New York, USA; Art Brussels, Belgium; Untitled, Art in Miami Beach, USA and Sydney Contemporary, Australia, as well as group presentations at Art Basel Hong Kong; Art Monte-Carlo in Monaco; Artissima in Turin, Italy, and Miart in Milan, among others.