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Until 23 November as part of the successful Fürther exhibitions series "Art in Hospital" artworks by the Franconian artist Hartmut Kuhnke are showcased. Last Friday, the doors were opened to a fantastic dream world full of humour and irony with a musically underlined private view on the third floor of the central building.

In his oil paintings convey wild jungles, golden shields and temple roofs, dark lakes, mountain tops and marble palaces tropical splendour like out of a picture book. Kuhnke is a dreamer and brings effortless and with careful meticulousness landscapes to the canvas, which he has never seen with his own eyes. Using innumerable, oversized-applied glazes he is able to capture light and moods. They are like fairytales that are in reality as rare as pigs, which are sailors on pirate rafts.

But even them appear in the pictures of the Windsbach born and bred artist. Hidden ironies, which often only looked at more closely are noticed and yet still aren't surprising in this world of fairies and goblins. There dancing natives with gazelles a wild "fire dance", naked women on the "ship of fools", dry bra and socks. An elephant pokes its snout out of a marble palace in order to control the "light snowfall". At another point a member of the same species fights against an army of snowmen.nke is a fun loving and sociable person, who is pleased to cook and takes from real life," said Tilman Oehler in the introduction about his colleague and friend. This impression is confirmed. Considering for example that the Kuhnke family, since a couple of months, holding a pet dog from an animal shelter. It certainly explains his new project in the - in the truest sense of the word - bitingly ironic woodcut series. One asks himself yet in "man and his dog", who actually leads whom. The following books with the titles "dog leads drunken king" and "king dog" provide already the answer.