Kevin Kuenster

Kevin Kuenster is a figurative magical realism painter who has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally in Italy as well as Canada. Recent exhibitions include Art in the Berkshires in Lenox, Massachusetts, DAMA Gallery in Los Angeles, Musonium Gallery in Palm Springs, California, Garrison Art Center in New York, The Musonium Gallery in Tampa, and ARC Gallery in San Francisco. Kevin describes his paintings by mentioning how “animals frequently appear in my work, not as mere companions but as mirrors reflecting the parts of ourselves we try to ignore: our primal instincts, our yearnings, and our connection to nature, which we often overlook or dismiss. Through these characters and their symbolic ears, I address the irony of human existence—our attempts to rise above the natural world while never truly being separate from the environment. The characters are rendered in detailed, expressive forms which capture both their humor and fragility, creating a tension between the ridiculous and the poignant”.

Reminiscent of David Lynch films, the viewer may notice conceptual figures who are either morbid or a therianthrope, a construct much like a mythological chimera fusing multiple organisms into one being. Kevin’s characters may remind the viewer of the Mystery Man from Lynch’s film Lost Highway or the enigmatic rabbit-people sitcoms on the television set portrayed in another Lynch film, Inland Empire. These contemporary mythological individuals which Kevin has constructed remain cold and distant from each other and especially towards the viewer. The spectator can observe the eyes of the figures wandering off into the distance, as if they are zoning out and losing consciousness, as opposed to peering into each other or at the audience. 

Ranging from fawns to rabbits, the various characters within the paintings often contain rabbit ears, growing antlers, or even have the face and head of a deer or rabbit. Often dazed, confused, and distant combined with a naturalistic yet colorful palette, the paintings reveal a contemporary reaction to lack of connection between individuals due to social constructs as well as technology. Sometimes wild animals will be frolicing in interiors within the compositions and will behave as a form of symbolism, perhaps referring to a containment or even destruction of nature by human impact. 

Herido de amor, coronado de éxtasis (Wounded by love, crowned with ecstasy) (pictured above) portrays a young woman in what appears to be a form of a taxidermy during her last moments of agony as she became hunted down. She has deer antlers growing from her head and she stands nude with injuries by arrows. Her legs appear to be cut off as if she were a taxidermal sculpture yet she bleeds out as if she were still alive. The morbidity of the painting may remind the viewer of concepts contained within the film Freaks from the 1930's, a film which in turn inspired David Lynch as a filmmaker. 

Kevin Kuenster combines the refined with the macabre. His disturbing paintings with their sense of morbidity ranging from suggesting bestiality, decapitation, torture, or murder convey an interpretation of a tormented contemporary world bent on social distance and violence. Kevin Kuenster reveals the darkest parts of human psychology, especially in the context of contemporary social discourse. The paintings contain a primal instinct followed by the refinement of technique and quaint interiors which contain a wild, raw nature as well as an absurdity contained through the concepts and subject matter. Kevin Kuenster displays a grand sense of vulgarity and debauchery on a scale and nuance seldom seen throughout the ages since the time of 17th century Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. 

https://www.kkuenster.com