Kurt Kauper, Barack Obama link

an excerpt from the interview

Your images are lifelike but not photo-realistic. What else are you conveying besides the Obamas' form?
 
KK: While I love some artists associated with photo-realism, I’m not interested in it as a formal option in my work. I like the high artifice of Renaissance space, the kind of space you find in traditional paintings; and I especially like the crystalline clarity of space in artists like Bronzino, Caravaggio, Ingres, or Meredith Frampton. When it’s used in contemporary subject matter it’s exotic enough to make the viewer uncertain as to the level of realism in the work. When done right, I think that that uncertainty can be subtly destabilising; it can have the effect of surrealist displacement, without having to use obvious means to achieve that experience of displacement.