Kurt Kauper

According to The New York Times, "It would be easy to read Kurt Kauper's nude portraits of the former hockey players Bobby Orr and Derek Sanderson as a rote comment on the fragile state of American (or Canadian) masculinity. They work better as an erotic and personal tribute, one that draws on the artist's childhood in a Bruins-worshiping Boston suburb; the neo-Classical figuration of Jacques-Louis David; and the overt sensuality of pre-Stonewall 'athletic' films." This slim, beautifully produced, bright yellow linen-bound exhibition catalogue with tipped-on cover image features some of the most strangely arresting male nudes on canvas today. Ranging from life-sized, full-frontal portraits of a nude Cary Grant at home in his suave, mid-century-movie-star manse (2001-2003) to the artist's most recent portraits of god-like, real-life Canadian hockey stars of the 1960s and 70s, this volume presents work that is perverse, liberated and rightly hilarious alongside essays by Wayne Koestenbaum and Pepe Karmel.

Kurt Kauper's Diva Fictions are paintings of imaginary opera singers, invented characters of glamorous condescension and fashionable dazzle, excessive theatricality and overt emotionalism, transmitting a wide range of contemporary cultural realities.