At some point in the aughts, I became aware of Kurt Kauper when I dragged an image of Hollywood icon, Cary Grant, from the Tumblr page where I found it to my desktop. I have never seen this painting in person, but I feel that I know it: Cary Grant is nude but for a watch on his wrist. His lithe body is darkly tanned except for where a square-cut swimsuit has left a stripe of pale skin. He stands in front of a fireplace in which a wispy fire glows. His right hand is on his slightly cocked hip. His left elbow rests on a mantle above which hangs a mirror that contains his reflection. On the mantle there is also a cigarette in an ashtray, a ceramic cup atop a book, and a green vase containing two stems of white orchids—which, surreally, are not reflected in the mirror. The vertical lines in the composition are strong, while the horizontal lines depict a perspective leading to a point outside and to the left of the birch panel on which the painting is made.

        Kurt Kauper’s recent show at Ortuzar Gallery, “Housekeeping,” was my first real and in the flesh experience with his work. The paintings further revealed what I found so compelling about the Cary Grant piece. The works, first of all, demonstrate a profound interest in formality—an exacting ability to physically render the subject at hand. They also demonstrate a masterful understanding of how to create visual harmony using perspective, composition, emphasis, balance, etc. Those skills, however, can only take an artist so far. What is so powerful about Kauper is that he uses this formality to create mises- en-scène that invite the viewer to invent narratives—to enter the world of the subject and bring to it their own fantasies, realities, and emotions.

        For example, Watching Men #14, a 12-inch square painting, depicts a man brushing his teeth. The black and white tile and a rippling apple green curtain behind him anchor an organized geometric compositional grid which is augmented by a painstakingly rendered coral pink chinoiserie wallpaper with twisting floral branches, monkeys, and a range of big cats. The delicate brushwork in the balding subject’s buzzed dark hair is masterful. The lifelike hand holding a yellow toothbrush and the light and shadows of his face are mind-blowingly technical. However, I am intrigued by the robe he wears. Kauper lets the eyes feel the silky sleekness of his red dressing gown with black collar and canary yellow pajama shirt. This attire suggests that the man, who we assume is before a mirror, is of a certain time and place, say, an early mid-century American city. He is cultured burgeoning on effete. The weariness he feels at the end of his day or for the day ahead can be seen in the slight glimpse we have of his eye. The attention that the artist gives to the light reflected in the tile and the detail of the green glass bottle just barely in the picture suggest a commitment to the order of this man’s life. This is in tension with an internal collapse the viewer can sense—the light reflected on the back of his red robe is a bright orange that is subtle and discomforting.

        This same orange also appears in the very strange picture, Fantasy #1. This painting depicts a scene that appears to take place in a park at night—but a night that is stage-lit. There is a field of grass as well as a concrete path. There is a yucca and what I perceive as primroses. Above this, a male figure, nude, emerges horizontally from a bright white puff of cloud. The gaze of the figure appears to be fixed on a divot in the grass; the divot could well be the shape of a human face. The right third of the picture is dominated by a bronze and frosted glass structure— a gazebo, a bus shelter? Behind that we see a sliver of empty parking lot. The aforementioned orange appears in the shadows on the figure as well as the shadow made by the structure. It is a powerful image but within it, you will find intricate brushwork, attention to minute details: blades of grass, light reflected on a small metal access hole cover. All this work, this effort, is part of a fantasy that we cannot know. But we inject ourselves into it, hiding away, behind the frosted glass, the things we most desire or that we most fear—which may be one in the same.

        In quite a different turn, there is the tondo, Objects Carefully Organized in front of the Curtains, on the Credenza. The title says it all. A green curtain, not unlike the one in Watching Men #14, just skims the top of a marble surface upon which sit a yellow pyramid, a milk glass bottle with one yellow and one red Gerber daisies, a clear highball glass containing a silver comb, and a blue glass plate upon which sits a wedge of raw salmon. This still life is on one hand a rather different kind of painting than other ones I’ve mentioned; but it plainly exists in their same world, and it possesses a commitment to image making that unites it to the other pictures. The way light reflects on surfaces, the austere geometry of composition, and the adroit attention to detail assure the viewer that the artist intends these objects—ordinary and strange—to resonate, to converse, with each other.

        The world the images in this show create is Lynchian. There is something ordinary about the objects Kauper chooses and the scenes he depicts, but there is also always something unusual or sinister that appears hidden, about to transpire, or blatantly in progress. This is perhaps why seeing the Cary Grant painting online was so compelling. On my computer screen, I could not see Kurt Kauper’s technique at its microscopic level, but I could see the cinematic scenario he vividly invented—a postcard-size reproduction of a human-size painting. I cannot escape thinking about how some twenty years after the Cary Grant painting was created, my computer can now access AI applications, into which I could cut and paste my description of the painting, and “create” some computer-generated version of the image. But the computer cannot give me the details, the craft, the love, the punctum that the hand of this masterful artist generously pours out for those lucky enough to see his work in person. This thought about our human condition in the digital age. is as eerie as the paintings themselves. This experience-sensation is something that can only be communicated between human art makers and viewers. Thankfully.

Paul Moreno is an artist and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He organizes New York Queer Zine Fair and is the New York City Editor for the New Art Examiner.