Stephan Kürten’s paintings adopt a Renaissance era concept of beauty as mathematical precision. The finite qualities of science provide a working model for visual harmony and spiritual enlightenment. In Silence, Kürten bases his composition on the classical proportion of the Golden Mean. Disclosing this rectangular purity in the grid-like perspective of the building, Kürten repeats this Utopian ratio throughout; the organic disposition of the foliage yields to the refined rules of culture. In painting the precarious balance between nature and civilisation, Kürten finds affinity in its perfection of order.