About
Born in Akron, Ohio, Joel Kurtz is an American artist based in New York. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and has pursued extensive studies in the arts, a dual perspective that informs his unique approach to painting, where the organic and the technological intersect.
Artist Statement
My work considers the ongoing relationship between nature and technology. Nature appears as a living system in constant transformation, charged with beauty and emotion, while technology enters as a structure of abstraction, memory, and constructed intention. In my work, technological forms press upon natural space, altering it, interrupting it, and drawing new orders from it. At the same time, nature resists and feeds these systems, shaping the very abstractions that seek to define it. This reciprocal exchange forms a symbiotic condition—one in which each force continually reconfigures the other, advancing through tension rather than resolution.
My paintings explore these influences through visual form, focusing on the evolving relationship between nature and technology. I approach this subject through the lens of science fiction, bringing together landscape and abstraction to imagine the terraforming of previously unseen worlds. These speculative environments function as sites of transformation, where natural systems are altered, constructed, or reimagined through technological intervention. Within this framework, abstraction plays an active role in shaping the overall aesthetic, interacting with and disrupting the depicted landscapes rather than simply overlaying them. Through this process, my work searches for a balance between technological abstraction and the preservation of a natural state, reflecting a tension between control and organic growth, invention and continuity.