The Silence

Enveloping the viewer through its hyper-realistic surface, Silence, 2001, bears witness to Stefan Kürten’s broad catalogue of imagery, combining modernist architecture with the verdant freshness of a garden. The work succeeds in merging the impersonal with an intimate sense of presence, creating a disarming but comforting domestic geography. 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’ (S. Kürten, quoted in ‘Selected Works by Stefan Kürten’, www.saatchigallery.com/artists/stefan_kurten_articles.htm).