Kurt Kauper was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1966, and raised in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. He received his BFA from Boston University in 1988, and his MFA from UCLA in 1995. He has lived in New York City for the past 20 years.
His figure paintings of historical and imagined people tend to leave expectations unfulfilled, and elide simple categorization. In contradistinction to his clear and precise articulations of form, Kauper’s content is characterized by indeterminacy, unintentionality, ambiguity, fluidity, destabilization, strangeness, amorality, uselessness, and neutrality.