DAMIEN KURTH

Coil

Sanderson are pleased to present the exhibition Coil by Damien Kurth.

Kurth is a contemporary painter based in Te Moana-a-Toi, the Bay of Plenty. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts and was the winner of the Otago Polytechnic Painting Award, as well as being a finalist in the Adam Portraiture Award.

Working predominantly in oils, Kurth’s meticulously rendered ‘trompe l’oeil’ paintings depict groupings of everyday objects. These objects: rags stuck into bottle tops, jars containing unidentifiable liquids, rusted cans and old paint tins pop up time and again in Kurth’s arrangements, in different groupings and series’ each time presenting a new perspective.

Referencing his previous exhibitions, Reverb and Thrum, which investigate Lacanian theories of the ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ Coil depicts common and recognisable objects but asks the viewer to project or find their own meaning in the subject.[1]

While putting this exhibition together, the artist had been ruminating on Deleuze’s response to the philosophical concept of ‘the eternal recurrence’. The title Coil refers to this notion, first posited by Nietzsche, that time repeats itself in an infinite loop; and that we will live our lives as a series of events performed repeatedly for eternity. [2] Deleuze’s interpretation of this idea is that while everything returns eventually, what returns will always be different.

Using this series of work, Kurth interrogates the eternal return by revisiting existing subjects and showing them in a new context: Each viewer brings their own perspective and experience to the works and, through these interactions different meanings arise.

[1] Chaitin, Gilbert D. “Lacan and the Object of Semiotics.” SubStance 17, no. 3 (1988): 37–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/3684924.

[2] Dombowsky, Don. “The Rhetoric of Legitimation: Nietzsche’s ‘Doctrine’ of Eternal Recurrence.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, no. 14 (1997): 26–45. jstor.org/stable/20717676.