Long Time Now

Stefan Kürten’s catalogue of imagery merges the impersonal with an intimate sense of presence, creating a weird domestic geography that’s both comforting in its familiarity and asphyxiating in its excessive detail. As the artist puts it, the paintings are differing versions of an idyll, or rather stages of disappearing idylls. They seem to find a last refuge in all sorts and styles of picturesque houses with manicured lawns and cosy living rooms, or tamed and domesticated versions of nature, the gardens and parks of our communal recreation, counter-images and escapes from the quotidian and its purposeful rationality. Like faded images from a long expired dream, their very lack of authenticity makes them true.