Stefan Kürten: Somebody Else’s Dream

Stefan Kürten’s paintings expose the dogged attempt to make life perfect, at least on the surface.  Stale bourgeois interiors, corporate lobbies, and suburban homes recall the expectations and dreams embodied in the last four decades of economic progress in the Western world.  Some of Kürten’s imagery comes from 1970s books about living better and creating the perfect setting for a classy cocktail or dinner party.  Other images are fabricated from his own recent snapshots of buildings and homes in Germany and America.  The paintings shimmer with an interior radiance achieved through the artist’s subtle use of metallic gold paint.

Kürten’s paintings are about longing, dreaming, waking up and dreaming anyway.  The subjects, while realistically represented, appear fragile, unstable, poised to disintegrate at the slightest question of their value.  There is also something sweetly pathetic about these scenes – we recognize with compassion the tenacious belief in beauty, perfection, and ultimate happiness.

Stefan Kürten was born and continues to live in Düsseldorf, Germany.  He recently had a solo exhibition at Museum im Kulturspeicher in Würzburg, Germany.  A catalog will accompany the exhibition.