Cosar HMT is presenting the exhibition “Transmission”, featuring new, large-scale works by Stefan Kürten, from 11 April to 23 May 2008.
These current paintings by the artist, who works in Düsseldorf and New York, can best be described as fragmentary entities. Nothing in them seems straight forward. The unity of space and time is suspended; a seemingly contradictory complexity of differing perspectives accompanies the viewer on his voyage through the pictorial elements. These are familiar to us as analogies or quotations from the everyday reality surrounding us and yet curiously, in the new context, they appear other-worldly or fairytale-like.
Whereby the pictures, painted on a gold or silver ground, change with every movement of the viewer and at this level elude any attempt at a one-dimensional reading. Reality seems centered within a kaleidoscope, the sum of countless splintered fragments. But, in contrast to the kaleidoscope, it is not chance that determines the pictorial arrangement but the artist’s own calculation.
STEFAN KÜRTEN 1963 born in Düsseldorf 1982-83 Studium Philosophie und English an der Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf 1983-89 Studium Freie Kunst an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf 1989-90 Studium Freie Kunst, Masters, Art Institute, San Francisco 1992-94 Lehrauftrag am Art Institute San Francisco 2002-03 Lehrauftrag an der Hochschule für Künste, Bremen 2006 Lehrauftrag am Art Institute San Francisco lives and works in Düsseldorf and New York
MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS (SELECTION) 2007 'Shadowtime', Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld (solo) 'Shadowtime', Royal Hibernian Academy, DubliN (solo) 'Idylle–Traum und Trugschluss', Phoenix Hallen, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg 'Idilio', Domus Artium, Salamanca 'Die Kunst zu Sammeln', Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf 2005 'Le peintre de la vie moderne’, de Paviljoens Amsterdam 'The City: Contemporary Views of the Built Environment', Lehman College oArt Gallery, Bronx. NY 2004 'Contemporary Art from Germany’, European Central Bank 'Sammlung Hanck’, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf 2003 'The Nearest Thing to Heaven', Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg (solo) 'New Prints', International Print Center, New York
