The still lifes of candles in Gavin Turk’s Kerze series draw direct inspiration from Gerhard Richter’s renowned photorealist paintings, capturing the meticulous detail and serene essence of Richter's iconic works while introducing Turk's own conceptual twist. In typical Turk fashion, the recognisable imagery of candles is subverted by depicting them as recently extinguished, with ethereal curls of smoke trailing up the canvas. This subtle yet profound alteration adds complexity to the representation, transforming the serene stillness of a lit candle into a moment of transient beauty and subtle melancholy while drawing on the art historical concept of momento mori. The exhibition Kerze—the German word for candle—featured eleven paintings that reinterpret Richter’s early 1980s series of haunting photorealist candle paintings. While maintaining the photorealistic quality, Turk infuses these works with his distinctive conceptual approach, positioning the candles within dimly lit interior spaces framed by horizontal tabletops and vertical elements such as obscured curtains or windows, creating a sense of intimate yet ambiguous domesticity. In Turk’s iterations, the candles have just been snuffed out, with delicate threads of waxy smoke spiralling upwards from the extinguished wicks. This visual shift alters the narrative, imbuing the paintings with a sense of ephemerality, shifting the inherent symbolism from a source of light and life to a reflection on absence and the passage of time. Turk’s fascination with objects and imagery tied to the psyche and the surreal is evident throughout his body of work, where recurring motifs such as candles, pipes, eggs, doors, windows, clouds, and smoke reflect his deep interest in the symbolic and metaphysical qualities of everyday items. He consciously incorporates art historical references into his work, layering them mischievously like clues for the viewer to decipher, creating a dialogue between his contemporary reinterpretations and the canonical works he references. This approach invites viewers to explore the intersections of art history and modern identity, as Turk’s work oscillates between a romantic or tragic dialogue with history and a puckish rhetoric that questions authenticity and identity.