Artist Spotlight: Kurt Kauper

Kurt Kauper was born in Indianapolis in 1966 and was raised in suburban Massachusetts. He received a BFA from Boston University in 1988 and an MFA in painting from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1995. He has had solo shows at ACME Gallery in Los Angeles and Deitch Projects in New York City. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions in both the United States and Europe, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Kunsthalle Vienna, and the Stedelijk Museum in Ghent, Belgium. He has received numerous awards, including grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Tiffany Foundation, and  Pollock-Krasner Foundation. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Oakland Museum of Art, the Weatherspoon Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. He has taught at the Museum School in Boston, Yale, and Princeton University. He is currently a professor of art at Queens College, CUNY.

His paintings for the past 15 years have been images of familiar cultural icons — opera divas, Cary Grant, hockey players, and Barack and Michelle Obama — seen in a variety of unfamiliar ways. He will have a solo exhibition at ACME Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2012.