Kate Gottgens (b. 1965 in Durban, South Africa) is recognised for her hazy, yet vibrant paintings featuring figures by poolside and retro interiors. The works are thematically tinged with nostalgia — a nod to Hockney, Kitaj, and other pop artists, Gottgens also references images from art history and photographs from her personal archive. On her practice she writes, “My aim is to create paintings that present a world slightly off-kilter, suddenly menacing and uncertain, in surreal scenes that express our fragile attempt at order in the face of entropy and collapse.” Gottgens graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and was the recipient of the Ampersand Fellowship Award that resulted in a residency in New York in 2019. She was selected for Thames & Hudson's '100 Painters of Tomorrow' in 2014 and has exhibited across Europe, United States, and South Africa. She is currently based in Cape Town, South Africa.