Stefan Kürten: Green Carpet

Stefan Kurten’s work is informed by archetypes of suburbia. Houses with tamed gardens, concrete patios, old metal swing sets and withering potted plants represent our vain search for the Euro/American dream of “the good life.”

These “dream homes” express an architectural attempt to portray wealth and style, with a 1950s/’60s touch of postwar German architecture. While they appear safe and cozy, they also embody the dusty and suffocating moral values of a conservative world, and an attempt to protect this world within their walls, fences, and iron gates.

Certain paintings depict “holes” in the suburban idyll, exposing its underlying artifice, or eating away at it like an infectious disease. Wallpaper patterns fill the holes like decoration, while seeming misplaced and eerie. These patterned spaces, both beautiful and dangerous, are a reminder of the ideal lifestyle we constantly try to create, while disrupting it at the same time, leaving us with a sickly sweet aftertaste and an uncomfortable feeling of entanglement.