Stefan Kürten: Perfect World | Thursday, October 19
Graduate Lecture Series
The question of painting’s necessity and current relevance is one that has accompanied me through the years. What interests me in painting is the reflection and invention involved, making what is invisible visible. The motifs in my recent work represent an artificial and ideal world, utopias, that I find inspiration for in Germany as easily as in America; a “perfect world” with subtle and often uncanny “undercurrents,” devoid of human presence and isolated to the point of oppression.
Stefan Kürten is a painter and musician who lives and works in Düsseldorf. His work has been exhibited extensively at institutions such as Galerie Ute Parduhn, Düsseldorf; University Art Museum, Berkeley, California; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; and Alexander and Bonin, New York. Kürten’s paintings are in the permanent collections of several European and American institutions including Kunstmuseen Krefeld, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
He attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and later studied and taught at San Francisco Art Institute.
“Undiscovered Soul,” 2014; Acrylic and ink on linen; 75 x 106 inches
Credit: Courtesy of Stefan Kürten
