DAMIEN KURTH -ARTIST

Reverb: a persistence of sound, or an echo after a sound is initiated. 

Representational images such as a teacup or a paint jar at first glance seem like  straightforward and immediate subject matter to the artist in his studio. Instead, Kurth’s skilful and subtle paintings are deeply committed to close observation and theory of the way we relate to and see the everyday ‘things’ which populate our lives.

Kurth’s practice is concerned with semiotic concepts of the signifier and signified and draws on Lacanian theory where the symbolic and the real act as enduring corner stones, which he unwraps (and refolds), in his approach to representational painting.

“I find this representational type of work allows me to engage with the abstract - mark making, surface, colour, tone, composition etc - as well as the hard signifiers and what is signified by the represented (the objects and realism).”

In this body of work, Kurth is playing with the idea of reverb in his painting process; “where each mark is a response to a previous signal. The way layers of meaning are created, found, projected, edited.”

This is a new way to view the artist’s work: a site of contradictory ideas and perceptions, which the artist is playfully juggling.

Kurth draws upon the example of the famous illusion drawing which depicts a duck and a rabbit simultaneously, where our perception cannot concurrently hold on to both interpretations and has to shift between these different modes of viewing. It is this moment of visual transition and sense of possibility that Kurth is inspired by and drives his representational painting.