A winter’s evening in an idyllic suburban setting. A festively decorated table. Atmospheric, inviting light. It is only upon second glance that the picture opens up an abyss: one chair from the festive table stands outside the house, on the snow-covered terrace.Geschlossene Gesellschaft (Private party) is Kunert’s playful name for this work, which he has selected as Edition for us. He visually alters the common understanding of the concept in a precise manner, turning familiar ideas upside down, giving them a three-dimensional form; in this way, he makes them comprehensible in the truest sense of the word. Using packing materials, light foam pieces, clay, and paint, Kunert spends weeks or sometimes months building the model settings for his “little worlds,” and then ultimately photographing them in the studio.Enjoying delicate irony and clever, deeper meanings, and with the occasional flights into the grotesque or black humor, or with a touch of melancholy, Kunert stages his heartwarming, imaginative miniature worlds, which sharpen our eye for the absurdities of everyday life—and for “what is human behind the absurd,” according to a report in the news program Kulturzeit. “If we deal with hopeless situations as if nothing were wrong, then life has to go on.” Even if we have to sit outside at the evening’s feast.
