【 Taipei·DunRen】Susanne Kühn: Turtle Quest – 2024 Solo Exhibition  2024.11.23-2025.01.23

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Susanne Kühn: Turtle Quest – 2024 Solo Exhibition 

Taipei·DunRen

Susanne Kühn (Germany, b.1969) born in Leipzig, Germany, Susanne Kühn currently lives and works in Freiburg. She studied painting and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, as well as at the School of Visual Arts and Hunter College in New York, and was awarded the Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Currently, she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. Known for her unique fusion of realism, surrealism, and abstraction, Kühn’s works are dominated by exaggerated plants and fantastical flora juxtaposed with architectural or abstract geometric forms. Her art subtly balances humor with serious themes, exploring the tension between nature and constructed spaces. Her work is included in permanent collections including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Museum Frieder Burda (Germany), Zabludowicz Art Trust (UK), Schwartz Art Collection of Harvard University (USA), UBS Art Collection, and Deutschen Bundesbank...etc.

Susan Kühn’s style is a captivating blend of realism, surrealism, and abstraction, marked by bold contrasts and complex compositions. Her vibrant, saturated palette creates lush, almost dreamlike scenes. Deeply influenced by art history, Kühn draws from various artistic movements, incorporating themes, techniques, and aesthetics that she reinterprets within a contemporary context. She takes inspiration from classical landscape and still-life traditions, weaving in elements of her signature surreal and abstract styles. Using Renaissance techniques of perspective and spatial composition, she layers her works with depth, guiding viewers into a world where vivid, dynamic scenes invoke a precise yet dreamlike illusion. Her oversized plants echo the detailed botanical studies of historical still lifes but break from tradition, symbolizing nature’s resilience in an urbanized world. The integration of architectural elements and geometric forms reflects modernist and Bauhaus influences. By blending rigid structures with flowing natural lines, she creates a harmonious visual experience that feels both familiar and refreshingly new.

Susan Kühn’s work features subtle, often ironic humor that gently challenges viewers’ perceptions and expectations. This humor is evident in her clever use of scale and juxtaposition, where exaggerated natural forms and surreal landscapes contrast with precise architectural elements, humorously highlighting humanity’s attempts to control or coexist with nature. Her humor further emerges in the seemingly incongruous placement of objects, creating a whimsical, dreamlike quality that adds lightness to the philosophical undertones of her work.

Intrigued by the relationships between science, nature, and art, Kühn frequently references artificially cultivated flowers like pansies and orchids, portraying them with anthropomorphic qualities. Her plants take on human characteristics, as though flowers were imitating people and vice versa. Her botanical studies draw inspiration from 17th-century Dutch flower painting and European still lifes from the 16th to 18th centuries. Additionally, her work pays homage to German scientist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th-century pioneer in botanical illustration. Art historian Dr. Heidi Brunnschweiler notes, “Kühn explores the potential of virtual reality for new forms of pictorial thinking. In doing so, she subjects representations of humans and plants and their biological structures to reinvention. Organic forms can take on technoid appearance or grow into human-like beings. At its core, Kühn’s work is committed to precise craftsmanship, which enables her to interlink a wide variety of artistic languages.”

"Susanne Kühn: Turtle Quest" - 2024 Solo Exhibition presents recent works that reflect her exploration of the boundaries between the artificial, the virtual, and the real, and the contributions art can make to AI. Highlights include Turtle Quest, which uses a computer game as a metaphor for these themes, and Smoking Underwater, a portrait of an orchid from Kühn’s studio. In this work, the orchid—painted as if it’s smoking a cigarette—reflects life’s contradictions, as it embodies relaxation and health risks alike. These works, painted in soft pastel colors, create a “cute” yet slightly unsettling artificial world. In Vanity, Barbie-like furniture and a peacock are used to symbolize superficiality and vanity. Observed reinterprets Renaissance architectural structures in playful lavender tones, presenting a humorous world populated by characters resembling Japanese cartoons. Cut provides a glimpse through a dollhouse-like pink structure, evoking a fragmented view of reality.

Susan Kühn’s use of surrealism, collage, and cultural symbols from various eras and domains creates visual and conceptual depth. Like the Renaissance concept of the window framing a narrated landscape, her compositions provide viewers with fragmented narratives that blend contemporary digital experiences with past art forms, encouraging meaningful dialogues across time. Her subtle humor adds layers of depth, balancing philosophical reflection with visual delight. This multifaceted approach makes Kühn’s work both intellectually engaging and visually compelling, resonating with audiences on multiple levels.

Susanne Kühn: Turtle Quest – 2024 Solo Exhibition
Press Day:2024.11.22 Fri.  2:30pm – 4:30pm
Opening:2024.11.23 Sat. 3pm – 6pm (Opening for public)
Exhibition date:2024.11.2- 2025.1.25
Venue: Bluerider ART Taipei·DunRen
1F, No. 10, Lane 101, Section 1, Da'an Road, Da'an District, Taipei City
Tue. – Sun., 10am – 7pm
info@blueriderart.com
T: +886 2 27527778

Works


Smoking underwater

2024
200.5 x 120cm
Acrylic on canvas

Is part of the series which belongs to “Pansy underwater”

The painting is about contradictions, many things come together here: first of all - my sense of humor and optimism.
The strange environment of being underwater, flooded, endangered, at the same time being at a save and nurturing place. As I mentioned earlier, I have looked and studied algae and orchids at the university of Basel. So this is an orchid - actually one I have in my studio on a windowsill. The flower accompanies my daily routines. Live is always full of contradictions: we want to be healthy, but we love good food. We are curious and travel, but we use cars and airplanes… People smoke, but they know it is not good for you.So this Orchid does it all. Smoking, being cool, and knowledgeable.

Finally, the plant has a humanoid quality - it documents the threshold between the living and the machine - much like the robot, imitating us humans. My painting is a proposal to the design of robots, to overcome the “uncanny valley”.

In the background we see an alpine landscape - one I sketched on my hikes though the Swiss Alpes. And in the foreground a still-life of my own things… a purse with my money… ;) cell phone, shoes… all un-degradable.

I had great fun painting the body and the cigarette.

Pansy underwater

2023
250 x 200 cm
Acrylic on canvas

The composition refers to a classical portrait of an 18th century painting in Germany. The posture of the flower imitates in its body language - cartoon style - the traveling "Goethe in the Campagne" by Wilhelm Tischbein. Here in the painting by Tischbein, debris from antique times is lying on the ground; he is residing within the ruin of a former time. Very symbolic. Very patriarchic.

My portrait of a Pansy gives an idea how our future can look like: my household trash which is non-degradable is spread on the sea floor. It consists of a tea-can with Chinese tea, a post card with an image of a running elephant by Saint Laurent, a pink children’s bottle. The lights are brown, violet and red; like a burning fire. Chorals are growing in the foreground and on top of the painting, blue light is breaking through.

Yet - the flower has glass-like eyes; a funny mouth. Pansies are hybrid flowers; they have been developed by gardeners. am interested in their artificial quality of nature - and their humanoid character.

Palette- Palette Konrad Witz

2022
250 x 190 cm
Acrylic on canvas

The principle of this series is a general aesthetic form – the outlines of a painter’s palette. I regard the painter’s palette as a symbol for the painters work and his/her toolbox. In art history, this tool has defined the medium in a conservative limited way: oil paint, mixed in small quantities by hand, applied by the brush of the artist onto the canvas.

Today, in my opinion the medium painting encompasses much more: the medium has broken with its boundaries and has moved into photography, sculpture, digital expressions, and installation. “Painting beyond itself - The Medium in the Post-Medium Condition” is a book which discusses the medium painting in depth – in particular I find the essay by the scholar David Joselit interesting for my work.

The painting “Palette” shows a green heavy fabric – a portrait of a drapery – a subject matter of the late Gothic and early Renaissance. This particular fabric is a citation of the green coat of Anne of Konrad Witz’s painting “Joachim and Anne Meeting at the Golden Gate”, 1437-40.

In my painterly practise – I combine the materiality and tools of painting – the palette – with the subject matter of painting – the drapery. In addition to this Dadaesque train of thought, the depicted palette has pink cartoonlike feet like a running Snoopy.

In other words: painting is a fun and intelligent activity.

Turtle Quest

2024
100 x 60.5cm
Acrylic on canvas

Turtle Quest is a computer game. This work also depicts a artificial space, a cut person - we don’t know how it is - holds a book with a picture of a running turtle.

I talk a lot about the threshold of the generated, artificial and the real. And how much art can perhaps contribute to teach AI.

Cut

2024
80 x 71 cm
Acrylic on canvas

The new group of paintings which are deliberately painted in light pastel colors suggest a “cute” but uneasy environment. I wanted to add that they are about the fragment, the unfinished thought, which leaves space for the observer to interpret or to complete.

The painting “Cut” lets us look through a doll-house pink architecture; much like the renaissance notion where the window frame gives view of the narrated landscape. But in my painting, I do not offer a “complete” view, but unexpected fragments of a person which is tinted in green light. (night club, green house, disco) Furthermore, we see small toys in the upper left corner, as if these characters where mentally the extension of the person.

Susanne’s Shoe

2024
110 x 60 cm
Acrylic on canvas

Susanne’s Shoe is a painting about my sneaker. Hiking through sea cliffs and looking out for unfamiliar flowers. I had great joy adding the little artificial doll-eyes into the flowers peddles. I like that the painting has a fresh scent.

Orchid

2024
120 x 80.5 cm
Acrylic on canvas

In Orchid I wanted to push the actual action of the painting really in the background: the woman reading a message, the landscape and fabric in the foreground, the Orchid flowers. So, I overpainted these areas of the painting with very translucent color over and over again.

In the last few months I have been drawing a lot at the herbarium at the University of Basel: I looked at algae, the way they grow, the morphology. This soft, and elegant flow of forms is transferred in the wooden structure which is the single stalk contrast in the painting. An organic form becomes stable architecture.

Vanity

2024
90.5 x 70cm
Acrylic on canvas

The new paintings all are situated in new spaces: color space and architectural and compositional spaces.

Color: pastel, much like Barbie furniture and architecture, which influenced these paintings. The chair in Vanity…is a doll chair. I wanted to make a difference to the earlier series with its dark and mysterious colors and try to produce something subtle in a very light color space. That was not easy, but I am very happy with the result. The whole picture of society in an artificial world (barbie, oder sims, of computer generated games) is partly founded on vanity + superficial life styles. So - the peacock (the male specimen :) as the symbol for vanity needed to be placed in the middle of this composition - like a portrait.

Observed

2024
100.5 x 70.5 cm
Acrylic on canvas

The architectural structure is a quote of an old renaissance painting. It is tinted in an artificial toy-color – lavender, lilac, purple. The bird is a Kea – quite intelligent bird, using tools to access food, very curious. The bird is endangered in New Zealand, and only lives there. I bring these “ingredients” together, the curious bird observes the “funny (and crazy)” world which is in the right part of the painting.

Zaungäste

2023
Framed:84 x 64cm
Acrylic on canvas

Two chatting plants - the location is a construction fence in Italy last year. I came across this red plastic material in the middle of a street - weed plants were already growing and despite the noise and unfriendly environment the flowers were beautiful - so I thought - this needs to be painted.

Knofi

2024
Framed:54 x 44cm
Acrylic on gessoboard

The small painting Knofi - it is the flower of garlic - I love to cook by the way. How would a garlic flower need to look like to be a participant in an AI teaching session.

Flash Sketch 7

2020
Framed:54 x 44cm
Acrylic on gessoboard

A painting from the pandemic. My computer the only communication outlet, where I communicated with the world.

Artist


Susanne Kühn
(Germany , b. 1969)

Born in Leipzig, Germany, Susanne Kühn currently lives and works in Freiburg. She studied painting and printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, as well as at the School of Visual Arts and Hunter College in New York, and was awarded the Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Currently, she teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. Known for her unique fusion of realism, surrealism, and abstraction, Kühn’s works are dominated by exaggerated plants and fantastical flora juxtaposed with architectural or abstract geometric forms. Her art subtly balances humor with serious themes, exploring the tension between nature and constructed spaces. Her work is included in permanent collections including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Museum Frieder Burda (Germany), Zabludowicz Art Trust (UK), Schwartz Art Collection of Harvard University (USA), UBS Art Collection, and Deutschen Bundesbank...etc.

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