Stefan Kürten’s paintings expose the dogged attempt to make life perfect, at least on the surface. Stale bourgeois interiors, corporate lobbies and plazas, and suburban homes and yards recall the expectations and dreams embodied in the last four decades of economic progress in the Western world. Some of Kürten’s imagery comes from books and magazines; other images are fabricated from his own snapshots of buildings and homes in Germany and America.

The paintings shimmer with an interior radiance achieved through the artist’s subtle use of metallic gold paint.