Housekeeping

<p>Ortuzar is pleased to present "Housekeeping," the gallery's first solo exhibition by the New York–based artist Kurt Kauper. The show brings together new paintings on panel that depict objects arranged within domestic interiors, figures in suspended or ambiguous situations, and motifs drawn from art-historical sources. Central to Kauper's practice is the conviction that artworks do not convey stable discursive meanings. Instead, they give form to aspects of experience that resist linguistic definition. He approaches representational painting not as a vehicle for argument or linear narrative, but as a means of producing an emotive experience grounded in a response to visual form. In Fantasy #1 (2019), a figure derived from a 15th-century painting by Sassetta—originally a levitating saint—appears isolated and repositioned within a contemporary urban environment. A similar process is at work in Fantasy #2, Large Version (2025), which uses the pose of the Hellenistic bronze Boy with Thorn as a point of departure. New tondos incorporate elements from Giorgione's The Tempest, Watteau's Pierrot, and Manet's The Explosion. The series Watching Men depicts anonymous male figures adjusting their appearance within mostly domestic interiors.</p>