Description

From his precipitous rise in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Friedrich Kunath’s stock in trade has been making art that beautifully and lyrically combines the experience of the ordinary with the sublime. In the first major monograph devoted to the last 15 years of his work, the reader sees how the artist poignantly yet playfully distill the fundamentals of human emotion – desire, loneliness, and anxiety – creating comically tragic scenes in which human beings try to find their way in the world. Shifting easily between genres and modes of making – from painting to installation and even video – the work always maintains his signature wit and humour, laced with melancholy. Organised thematically rather than chronologically, the artist has considered the ideas that run throughout his oeuvre and offers new insights by gathering works across media though connected conceptually in ten chapters. Dave Hickey, the well-respected critic [and one-time MacArthur Genius Grant recipient] takes on the concept of beauty in relation to Kunath’s work. Art historian James Elkins offers a more experimental approach to art history writing in his essay on the artist’s installation and video works and their use of appropriation.