Master Street Painter Kurt Wenner for Huis Ten Bosch Theme Park Project

When Huis Ten Bosch, a European style resort located in Nagasaki Japan, needed to find a great central attraction for their Autumn Festival they turned to Empire Japan to deliver contents that were unique to Europe.The client wanted to emphasize the fact that new and exciting things were happening at Huis Ten Bosch, while remaining true to the European romantic theme of the resort. It was important that the attraction generate interest from the media and result in significant PR exposure for the park. It was also important that word-of-mouth be generated from park guests themselves.To meet these challenges Empire Entertainment's Japan office identified Master Painter Kurt Wenner as the answer to Huis Ten Bosch's needs.

Working with Empire and Dentsu, Huis Ten Bosch's agency, Kurt developed ideas for two separate street paintings based on the theme of metamorphosis. He also allowed for the integration of Huis Ten Bosch's Autumn Harvest Festival into the context of the pieces. Both designs prominently featured Huis Ten Bosch's name, allowing for maximum PR and word of mouth exposure (through both PR and guest photos). Kurt's ability to combine extraordinary drawing talent with a perspective technique virtually lost in today's creative process created large scale one of a kind works that dazzled park visitors.Kurt Wenner's works utilize a Baroque era painting technique called Anamorphism. Wenner's unique and innovative use of anamorphic perspective creates unforgettable images that combine the painted surface with its surroundings into a single composition that appears 3-dimensional.Kurt's first work for Huis Ten Bosch, "The Banquet of Circe," was inspired by Homer's Odyssey. The painting features a scene where the sorceress Circe offers a bountiful harvest to the hungry companions of Ulysses, but the magical food transforms them into animals.Kurt's second work "The Triumph of Puck" was inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and features Puck, having transformed the farmer "Bottom" into a donkey as the sprites harvest grapes, pumpkins, chestnuts, and mushrooms in the foreground.These paintings were both executed on the floor's flat surface using Kurt's hand made pastel chalks. They represent the first street paintings Kurt has ever created in Japan, and were tremendously well received by Huis Ten Bosch, the media and the park guests.

Four television stations visited the park and filmed Kurt's work in progress, with a total of over twenty minutes of on-air coverage (ten minutes of that being a live broadcast from the park). Five newspapers also covered the event, publishing articles with images of Kurt's artwork.Huis Ten Bosch was thrilled with both the artistic and PR results of the project, and has expressed interest in inviting Kurt back to Japan in 2005 to create new works.For this event Empire identified and contracted the artist, was responsible for all production logistics associated with the performance, and performed as the on-site producer.

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